system seems to be a bit of a mess right now. i think there will be questions going forward about why they made this decision, when they made it and if they gave parents enough time to react. >> dakota smith with the "l.a. daily news" in the echo park section of los angeles, thank you very much. it is now 12:00 noon here in the east coast. it is 9:00 a.m. on the west coast, where if you live or work there, if you are up, you no doubt have already heard the second largest school district in the united states, los angeles unified, l.a. unified school district is this morning shut down because of what someone called a level 1 or credible threat that came in. the associated press has been reporting for some time and came in electronically via e-mail and from overseas. using a lot of caution, the l.a. unified school district chose to keep all of their students at

home. an advisory went out to avoid all backpacks and right now the entire place, all of the school property, buses, the physical plant as it's known, each individual school is being walked, is being checked, is being swept by law enforcement as families scramble and children scramble. there were robocalls that went out this morning trying to catch everybody before their children went out the door to school. obviously it didn't catch everybody before they went out the door to school. didn't catch all working parents before they went to work. we should also add that tensions were already high and parents will understanding this instantly for a lot, especially of high school kids, this was finals week. this is finals week in the l.a. unified school district. l.a. unified does not mean all the schools in what you would

think would be that umbrella. there are certain communities like beverly hills, like burbank, like glendale that are not part of it. parochial schools were not at first a part of it. and from local media, we are understanding that many of them are choosing to go along with this and either send their students home or not open at all. as you see there are 640,000 students, k through 12, affected by this. this includes 187 public charter schools in the los angeles area. we have live pictures coming in and what appears to be a police roll call going on in the middle of a parking lot. we are joined on the telephone by member of congress brad sherman from california. he serves the san fernando valley area of southern california and congressman, what were you told and when were you

told it? >> well, i have been in touch with various people involved in this at l.a. usd. i woke to find out that the schools would be closed and i have been told that the person who made this electronic threat, e-mail threat, claims to be a devout muslim that supports jihad, but we have no idea if that's true. >> congressman, we just heard this briefing here in new york by the mayor and the police commissioner, and i'm going to ask our folks to have that tape ready and play it back for those who missed it. what was striking and notable about it is they appeared to say that they saw this thing, this same threat, and dismissed it and that is why it is not

applying to new york schools this morning. whose call is it, congressman, in l.a. unified? is it the superintendent and tamron hall was asking this question earlier, is it in concert with state officials, is it in concert with the feds? >> you would expect them to seek advice but ultimately, it's the decision of the superintendent. >> so as local as local gets. of course, public education in this country was always intended to be a local matter. so congressman, we are going to ask that you call us if you can, if you learn anything more about this. we are all basically dealing with this at the same time. pete williams, our justice correspondent -- yes, go ahead, congressman. >> -- is that the text of the e-mail does not reflect that the

author is a real student of islam. someone with absolutely no understanding of islam could have written this. so we don't know what the agenda is of whoever sent this out, and we'll just have to see. >> can you be general in how it is we know that? can you help us out as to why the text could not have been written by a true student of islam? >> it doesn't contain allusions to events that occurred in the life of mohammad. it doesn't quote koranic verse. it doesn't have the hallmarks of isis propaganda which of course, that propaganda is aimed at muslims. i don't know who wrote this and it could have been written by

someone with a great understanding of islam. it could also have been written by someone who claims to be a muslim and isn't. >> congressman brad sherman, thank you very much. you have added to what we know about this. our justice correspondent pete williams remains in our washington bureau. pete, of course, it kind of occurs to all of us, isis doesn't give advance warning, either. >> no. that's the thing about threats. with one or two exceptions that i can think of, the oklahoma city bombing or the bombing at the olympic park, centennial park in atlanta at the olympics there, with the exception of that one, i can't think of many times where threats preceded an actual act of violence for the obvious reasons that you can think of. but to pick up on the point you were just talking about there, the commissioner in new york made a similar point. he said that for example, the text of the message, allah isn't

capitalized, the "a" isn't capitalized which it would be if someone was a real student of islam. but let's step back a little bit here and think about threats to schools and how much they have been exploding in just -- perhaps that's not the right word, how much they have been expanding in the last couple of years. the most recent study i have seen on this looked at threats for the first half of this school year which would have been starting last fall and going through the first half of the year. 812 school threats across the country, 46 states being involved, 44% of them involved threats of bombings and one of the factors that the authors of this study cite is the rapid spread of electronic devices in the hands of students who can post these threats and try to do so anonymously. the fact that this was an e-mail threat and the fact that it was sent to several different school

districts at least according to the police commissioner in new york does give investigators a huge leg up in trying to trace it. these things are not always successful, but they can be suggestful. just a couple of weeks ago, there was a threat to the university of illinois in chicago to -- that caused the school administrators to shut that school down over the weekend and close school on monday. they ultimately determined that it was a hoax threat and were able to figure it out through dh the chain of e-mails. we are still trying to establish in fact whether this was exactly the same text that was sent to both l.a. and new york and potentially other schools. so that is based solely on the word of the police commissioner and the mayor in new york, presumably they would know what they're talking about. you have to remember the new york city police commissioner also had a similar job in los angeles so he has some experience in both places. the second question is whether any federal authorities were involved in these decisions to

pick up on the point you were making about why would the decisions come out differently if there was sort of a unified discussion among all these districts. the mayor in new york made reference to the department of education and we are seeking comment from them. i haven't been able to determine that the department of homeland security played any role in this. but as the congressman said to you a moment ago, the bottom line here is local schools are, you know, one of the most pure forms of local government, fiercely local control for local schools, and it's their decision no matter what other advice they made get. they are the ones, it's their call. >> pete, you are absolutely right. i was trying to get at this dichotomy. how could officials in new york, mayor de blasio, police commissioner bratton, who are not given to hyperbole normally be so dismissive of this same threat if indeed l.a. unified

was taking this action based on nothing more than this same threat. and it's what you were getting at as well. i don't know who is going to be able to confirm for us yep, that's the language we read, this e-mail came in overnight from overseas, how do you know that, and so on. >> by the way, we are told the e-mail, they said out in los angeles this morning the e-mail was sent although they didn't explicitly say e-mail but i think we determined that it was an e-mail now, they said it was some kind of electronic communication was the way they put it, in other words, not a phone call, that it was sent to a specific board member and our information is it was sent to the superintendent which may have had some impact here in how this is playing out. but you know, i'm sure within the next couple of hours we will have a better read on this and they did promise out in los angeles to come back later today and give more information about why they made this decision, the nature of the threat.

but one other thing that of course is obvious, i think, but has to be said is we want as much information as possible about what the wording of these threats turned out to be but at the same time, the authorities don't want to get too specific because they don't want to give the playbook of, you know, bomb threats for dummies. here's what you need to say if you want to have a bomb threat that's effective. they have to try to kind of walk that line. >> our justice correspondent pete williams in our washington bureau, regarded of course by his colleagues here as the very best in the business. if there's a way to source this out, pete will rejoin us as we learn more about this threat that has shut down the l.a. unified school system, the second largest in the country. to another old friend we go, a 30 plus year veteran of law enforcement, former head of the atf, jim cavanaugh. jim, you have been watching all of this from your listening post along with us. what questions occur to you and any disconnects? >> well, i think that the

discussion you have had is important, because i think what l.a. unified district is dealing with is what's happened in their backyard in the last two weeks. remember, just within a few miles of their student body, they had 14 people slaughtered, they had them manufacturing and the ability to make up to 19 pipe bombs, at least four remote control bombs. one of those bombs was in a backpack that was left at the inland regional center where they did the slaughter. los angeles citizens have been bombarded with that case for two solid weeks. we have seen it constantly in the national news. but they have never gotten away from it. these are their neighbors and friends. they are making that decision in the shadow of that event. i think at least we got to give them -- we've got to give them that. we've got to also understand that. new york is 3,000 miles away. now, if this turns out to be the

same message as pete talked about and it's from overseas and it's not a credible threat, then you know, everybody can go on but with a heightened sense of how to make your schools secure, your businesses, your hospitals, your facilities secure first when you're not under the threat, and to search it and clear it and you'll be better prepared when the threat does occur. >> jim cavanaugh, thanks. we will be coming back to you. we have just been joined by republican from texas, congressman mike mccaul. important this morning and at all times, because happens to be chairman of the homeland security committee on the house side. mr. chairman, i guess i'm asking for what you know that you can add to however much of our conversation you have been able to overhear. are we talking about new york and l.a. having seen and taken in the same threat overnight? l.a. having acted upon it, new york not? >> yeah, we think it does come

from the same source but we don't have all the facts in right now. the threat appears to be the same type of threat and of course, in new york, as you know, they have called this a hoax. i think the l.a. superintendent did the right thing, taking the extra precaution of shutting down the schools until we got better information about what this is. this happens actually more frequently than we would like to. oftentimes a bomb hoax. we also know the terrorists would like to basically disrupt things by hoaxes. we saw before the fourth of july last year airplanes that were grounded over hoaxes. so this is currently what the fbi and homeland are looking into is where did the threat come from. there has been some initial reporting that it may have come from an i.p. address out of germany. we are doing that attribution now back to possibly europe,

where the source of this threat may have come from. >> congressman, will you be briefed as that kind of electronic investigation goes on today? will you be part of the group that the feds will advise on this? >> yes. i had a briefing actually on the issue of the visa issue to miss malik, san bernardino terrorist, and i'm sure in that discussion, this topic will come up as well. >> congressman, you are also very right about the following thing. we are great at second-guessing. i should probably add traditionally, mainstream news media have tried not to report threats, bomb threats or otherwise, when threats result in a huge public action like this, we are duty-bound to report them like today. but second guessing, especially in the kind of social media era has become something of an

olympic sport. but as jim cavanaugh said before you, we have to keep this locality in mind. this is an area of the country that has been badly shaken. they saw such terrible bloodshed, so much police activity, that it's in that context that the head of l.a. 81 f unified acted this morning. >> correct. this area has been traumatized. i think taking the precaution to protect children's lives, when we don't know if the threat is real or not or if it's a hoax, they did exactly the right thing here. you are correct, reporting is important but i will say this is a very convenient and inexpensive and effective way to disrupt, if you can send an e-mail out or phone message and bring down an entire school district or ground airplanes. we don't again know the source

of the threat itself or how credible but we do know that the terrorists have looked at exploiting this means of social media as a device to shut things down. >> that's right. congressman, we say this quite often these days. this kind of is the definition of terrorism. look at what has happened to l.a. unified school district. >> if they can raise a flag anywhere, again, it's a very effective social media technique we know they are very good at. when we follow most of these isis tweets out there, about 200,000 per day, they are very effective in social media and propaganda and they know how to exploit in the internet space, social media space. so we can't discount that at this point in time but we have no confirmation right now that what the source of the threat is. i know that new york is reporting their threat is a hoax at this point in time. i certainly hope that's the case in los angeles. >> we join you there.

congressman mike mccaul is among the small circle of elected representatives in washington who is briefed on such things on a regular basis. he is chairman of the house homeland security committee. mr. chairman, thank you very much for being with us. we continue to watch this situation in the l.a. unified school district. we will take a quick break. ♪ i built my business with passion. but i keep it growing by making every dollar count. that's why i have the spark cash card from capital one. i earn unlimited 2% cash back on everything i buy for my studio. ♪ and that unlimited 2% cash back from spark means thousands of dollars each year going back into my business... that's huge for my bottom line. what's in your wallet?

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welcome back. good day from new york. let's go to the other coast where millions of people are scurrying, where over half a million students and that of course means by extension, their parents and families were told this morning no school today. if you go to school in the l.a. unified school district because of what someone called a level

one threat, a serious threat as they saw it, arriving electronically. we presume that to mean via e-mail. associated press says it originated from overseas. that has since been reported to us by the chairman of the house homeland security committee. the net-net bottom line of all of this is no school today, stay home. so especially working parents are scrambling and especially in those households where they missed the robophone call this morning or the phone call never came, their children were already on buses. we are giving you what overhead shots we get from knbc in los angeles, where this is a huge local news story this morning. miguel almaguer, our correspondent in our los angeles bureau, is there in the thick of all of it. >> reporter: certainly an unprecedented move to cancel

classes for the entire l.a. usd. it is a massive undertaking as you alluded to for all of these parents to turn back around, retrieve their students from school as it has effectively shut down. it's the second largest school district in the nation, as you can see some 640,000 students going through k through 12th grade. more than 900 schools in addition to 187 public charter schools in that area. this was finals week for many of the high school seniors at the district. so this decision coming certainly there was the mayor or excuse me, the superintendent saying he was going to take no chances when he received this threat. of course, we are only about 60, 65 miles away from san bernardino where that terror attack left 14 people dead, less than two weeks ago. so this maybe a ripple effect from that. the superintendent making a reference to what happened in san bernardino by saying he would take no chances. we do expect a press conference in just over 30 minutes from the superintendent.

he had said in his previous press conference early this morning that every school would have to have every building checked, that all campuses would have to be secure before classes could resume possibly tomorrow. certainly a major undertaking and a big decision catching many people by surprise. this decision coming down just before 7:00 a.m. here on a very busy tuesday. >> miguel, thanks. i was just listening to local radio news in los angeles, where they are talking about new york and here's why. within the last hour, the two leading officials here in the city of new york, mayor de blasio and police commissioner bratton, have talked about what we believe is this same threat that they received. overnight or in the early morning hours of today, let's say, the same threat to schools comes in los angeles and new york. we are going to play this for you now at a news conference,

these officials in new york, mayor and police commissioner talked about this threat which we believe to be the same one l.a. acted upon, but listen to how much doubt the new york officials cast on it, suggesting los angeles overreacted. >> this is not a credible threat. it is not something that we are concerned with. what we would be concerned with is overreacting to it. we will stay aware, we will stay involved, but at all costs we cannot start overreacting to what will probably be a series of copycat types of initiatives. we are investigating it as a hoax. we believe that the e-mail originated overseas. the language in the e-mail would lead us to believe that this is not a jihadist initiative. for example, that allah was not spelled with a capital "a." that would be incredible to

think any jihadist would not spell allah with a capital "a." >> this matches what a congressman told us on live television in the past hour, that there were omissions, there were figures of speech, perhaps spelling and capitalization errors in this threat that led many public officials to doubt the veracity of it. as i said right now on local news radio in los angeles, they are interviewing their counterpart on local news radio in new york and this is what they are discussing. they are saying in effect wait a minute, this was the same threat that was received in new york but you considered it a hoax, you shot holes in its veracity, why then did l.a. unified act to keep everybody at home today? for those just joining us, in about a half an hour, we are expecting the next news briefing

from, among others, the superintendent of schools in l.a. unified. let's put the graphic back up to show you exactly what we mean when we say los angeles unified school district. again, second largest in the country. 640,000 students k through 12. that number equals more than the population of many of our midsized cities in this country. we are talking about 900 schools, including 187 public charter schools. at the same time, think of this. parochial schools, they had their own independent decision to make. are you going to tell parents that you don't disagree with the judgment of l.a. unified and parochial school children are free to come into school today? what about the districts that are seemingly imbedded right next to l.a. unified? communities like beverly hills

and burbank, not a part of l.a. unified but they had a decision to make this morning as well. and as the chairman of the house committee on homeland security was just discussing with us, doesn't this match the definition of terrorism. this has terrorized a lot of people in what is already a badly shaken area from the pacific coast east through the inland empire of southern california after the terrible bloodshed in san bernardino, california. again, if you are just joining us, l.a. unified schools have been shut down for today. this was already final exam week for a lot of students, especially high school students out there, and part of our discussion in the last hour was indeed that for years, traditionally, mainstream media especially have tried not to

report bomb threats. it has just been a constant and one of our operating principles. we are left with no choice on a day like today when a bomb threat itself becomes news because of what public officials have acted on. i'm going to see if we can listen into any of the live coverage on knbc, our nbc station in los angeles this morning, because they are covering such a big local story, they have opted to in some cases not air "today" on nbc because local news has taken precedence. all along, these are the aerial photos we have been watching as they cover all these local school districts and have the buses left, did the buses remain in place. let's listen in here briefly. >> it is just about 9:30. the bottom of the hour here. you're watching nbc 4 news

breaking coverage of the district-wide shutdown in l.a. usd. what you are seeing on the screen here, the right side of the screen, you see the podium. we are awaiting another press conference coming up in about 30 minutes at 10:00 a.m. from l.a. usd headquarters. on the left side of the screen you see news chopper 4. megan reyes has been up above flying over various schools impacted by this. again, massive district-wide shutdown impacting hundreds of thousands of students, all because of an electronic threat sent whether it was this morning or last night, we are still getting clarification but sent to the district, specifically aimed at schools and students. >> all right. there was also the nypd commissioner bratton says the new york area schools received the same kind of threat. it was quickly concluded that it was a hoax and l.a. officials overreacted. now on the line we understand a reporter with wnbc. have we made that connection? michael george? hi, michael.

assessment of the situation of what's going on over there in new york. >> reporter: yeah. very different reaction here in new york. in the last hour we heard from police commissioner bill bratton. he is saying what the l.a. unified school district did was an overreaction. he says new york received the same threat, an e-mailed threat that was nonspecific to a particular individual or school and they quickly determined that was a hoax. he said it's important that we not overreact to situations like this and he said that the mayor is actually encouraging students to go to school today, saying this is not a credible threat, the schools are safe and for now, they are encouraging everyone in new york to treat this like a normal day. >> saying the exact same threat? did he give any other information about how they are able to determine it's the same threat, not just a similar threat? many districts, many schools get bomb threats. the fact that he's coming out and saying it's the same threat,

is he giving any other information about how they know that? >> reporter: well, what the commissioner said, he wouldn't go into many specifics as to the nature of the threat. what he said is from their indication, it's the same threat being made at school districts across the country. he described it as an e-mailed threat that was -- >> for viewers just joining us, including those listening to our coverage on sirius xm radio, worlds are colliding right now on both coasts. what you're listening to is a knbc local news coverage talking to wnbc. our nbc station in los angeles is interviewing a reporter at our nbc station in new york and this is by way of bringing in our justice correspondent pete williams, because pete, we are chasing down this report that l.a. and new york get the same threat, worded the same way.

for whatever reason, the security apparatus in new york city dismisses it as a hoax. there are incredible aspects of this e-mail. they toss it out. l.a. unified acts on it and keeps all the kids home. >> so a couple thoughts about this. first of all, a member -- a couple of things have emerged now. i suspect a lot more than what the l.a. authorities said what they made this decision. this e-mail came in last night a little before 11:00 last night. i think that's probably california time. so it's after midnight here on the east coast. it was sent to a specific school board member and now they know the e-mail, the last known i.p. address, they traced it as far as frankfurt, germany, school authorities say, although i seriously doubt they knew that information when they made this decision last night. this is sort of like, you know, city officials trying to decide whether to shut down city because it's going to snow and they don't know what the snow's

going to be like at 6:00 a.m., they have to make a decision early on so i suspect they were in the same boat here, and i would be surprised if they knew, although we'll find out, that the new york authorities have received the same information, you know, when it became clear that other school districts had received that information, i think is something we are going to have to determine. a member of congress who says he has reviewed the e-mail says the author claimed to be an extremist muslim who has teamed up with local jihadists and that it made relatively specific and wide-ranging threats to schools. now, one question here, was this e-mail though it may have been substantially the same identical or did it say new york schools and the e-mail sent to new york, did it say l.a. schools in the e-mail sent to l.a. that's something we have to determine. now we know a lot more about it. the question is how much of this did they know when they made this decision.

i suspect very little. >> pete, while they are poles apart in importance, your comparison to the decision school districts have to make on a snow day is absolutely right on. you can be a hero or you can be a goat. we saw this happen in new york city when the city shut down well in advance of what was expected to be a blizzard. the storm was off by just a few points on the map. the streets were easily passable. the mayor of new york was criticized for jumping the gun. this has to involve obviously in los angeles unified district the safety of people's children. over a half million children and students in southern california and also as pete raised, it's hard to know sitting there in l.a. unified, as we have talked about, you have to view this not

in a vacuum but in the background of a region that has suffered such great tragedy and bloodshed. it's hard to know that this is also being read, also being sent to other localities in the united states. pete, i keep coming back, though, to the issue of isis doesn't give written warnings. >> well, that's certainly not their habit. that's why i think all these threats, you know, we get them all the time against airplanes. so you are the captain of an airplane, you are sort of in the same position as the superintendent of the l.a. unified school district. you know and he said this morning, the superintendent, that they deal with threats all the time. this one stood out to them. you know, you are the captain of an airplane, you are in flight and you get word that there's been a threat. now you know that there's threats all the time and you know that they almost never turn out to amount to anything.

but it's your plane, it's your souls on board, it's your life, it's your crew, what do you do? so it's pretty easy to sit here and say that seemed like an overreaction but if you're in that situation, it's hard to know. it all comes down to how much information was available at the early hour when the los angeles authorities had to make this decision. as far as we can determine, at least at this point at 12:30 in the afternoon east coast time, we don't think there was much federal coordination here. we don't believe that the department of homeland security was involved. we don't think the federal department of education was involved. we don't think the fbi was involved or the justice department. and of course, normally speaking, you wouldn't think it would be, because these decisions on closing schools are very local ones. but i'm sure we are going to learn more about how much consultation they were involved in and how much effort they made to try to reach out and verify

the credibility of this i'm sure to them very frightening e-mail. >> absolutely. pete, thank you. back to your sources and flag us when you next need to come on the air and report anything new. you see there, we have been running a box on the lower right-hand side of the screen. it is the podium, microphones and backdrop at the next event we are waiting for here, within this next half hour. they say 10:00 a.m. l.a. time, 1:00 p.m. east coast time, we are going to hear from some of the same officials who made the initial announcement this morning and that was that the l.a. unified schools would be closed, presumably we will be hearing from superintendent cortinez. we joined by jeremy bash, former chief of staff at the cia and the pentagon, now an advisor to the hillary clinton foreign policy team. jeremy, we talked to you vis a

vis your experience in such matters. take on any of those aspects that pete williams was just reporting. people are going to criticize the lack of coordination with feds, with the state, new york, l.a. easy to criticize in retrospect. tougher when you're in the game and things are happening in realtime. >> in my experience, isis and even al qaeda have not directed targets at school districts. what i think is really motivating decisions here by school officials by law enforcement officials, is the context. it's really the distinction between california and new york is geography. we have just had san bernardino attacks and those -- in that case, we don't believe, our preliminary view is we don't believe those killers were directed by isis command and control, by their headquarters in raqqah, in syria, or in iraq. so they appear to have been sort of lone wolf plotters, lone wolf

killers, but maybe something a little different. maybe lone wolf on steroids, maybe networked wolf, where they have extensive preplanning, extensive self-training, extensive stockpiles of weapons and connection online to other extremists and the fact those people undertook that operation and engaged in that killing in that very unorthodox, unusual target in san bernardino i think is really what's weighing heavily on the minds of law enforcement and school officials in los angeles. now of course, post-9/11, i think you had the same dynamic in new york city. so i think as pete and others have pointed out and we will of course learn more at the top of the hour when we hear directly from school officials, but it's really being overly protective, overly cautious with the lives and wellbeing of school children. i would have expected that that decision was really made locally. it wasn't a federal decision. and that's when you would expect in this case. >> yeah.

local control of school districts is an ingrained part of our country. it was said after san bernardino that somewhere, i don't know whether it was written in "inspire" magazine or not, aspirational jihadists were told that sometimes in the world of soft targets, the softest target is where you go every day, where you work every day, because you know the ways in and out, because it's normal and mundane and because there are people there. and in this perverse brutal business of terrorist attacks that we find ourselves in, it's a point you can understand. >> well, that's right. and the new new normal, if you will, the new mode of operating is to be on heightened awareness. it's not just if you see something, say something. but it's really to be worried about what the next threat might be.

if a couple living in san bernardino with a 6 month old baby living seemingly normal lives can unleash such terror and such carnage on an office park at a holiday party of all things, that has really captured the concern of the american people. i think you see it reflected in the mood of the country, in public opinion polls, in what's being discussed on the presidential campaign trail, and the fact that the president of the united states went to the pentagon and held this pretty unique national security council meeting with his military and national security leaders yesterday at the pentagon, it's why tomorrow he's going to go back out to northern virginia to the national counterterrorism center and sit with the analysts and operators there and really talk about how we have to be worried not just about isis in syria and iraq, but also who they are radicalizing and who they are inspiring here at home, because so much of this radicalization happens online, it happens through social media.

we have to engage social media technology companies in being part of this fight. i think you will hear a lot about that from secretary clinton as you referenced in her remarks today in minnesota. that's really the thrust and focus of what she wants to focus on. really talking about the home front, talking about hardening our defenses here, being on guard, watching out for this threat. i think this is going to be with us for a long, long time. as i said, it's sort of a new new normal. we better get used to it. >> jeremy, thank you very much for being with us. the entire time he has been talking, we have been seeing these aerial pictures of southern california. we are talking about the l.a. unified school district. the other box on the screen shows modest as it is, the room where this news conference is going to be held that now will get so much of the focus of the media watching and listening nation. that is the superintendent of schools will talk about this

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and bringing love where it's needed most. love. it's what makes a subaru, a subaru. brian williams back here with you from new york. we have been covering what is from the surface a beautiful day in southern california. the aerial photos we have been showing you look like the opening sequences of any number of television shows we grew up watching, except it's a troubling day in southern california, as all the students, all the members of the l.a. unified school district were kept at home this morning because of what the school superintendent called a valid threat, a level 1 threat was the term that was used. a lot of people didn't know how to translate that, what exactly a level 1 threat meant. well, this morning we have learned that meant schools closed, parents have been

scrambling. also germane is the fact that temperatures were in the 40s this morning in parts of southern california. this weird pre-christmas weather we have had where yesterday's high in buffalo was 71 degrees and here we are in southern california with temperatures more accurately associated with the northeast. we are right now joined by the mayor of los angeles, eric garcetti. i was just listening to you on news radio in los angeles. we have this dual-pronged story as you noted going on between new york and l.a. new york public officials say they got this very same threat, same language. the mayor and police commissioner said we tossed it out, it was not valid, it was not credible, but in los angeles, things are different. the schools are indeed the call of the superintendent. was there any coordination between the school

superintendent of l.a. unified and your office, mr. mayor? >> there was communication after he made the decision. but it's an independent school district here not under the control of the city. but we immediately said of course we are here to support and to help the school district in any way. our los angeles police department actually put together in conversations with the new york police department that this was not just a threat to los angeles, but to other school districts as well. and alerted federal authorities to that. you know, it's easy to monday morning quarterback decisions made by others but i think all of us as parents, all of us as other folks of course would always, you know, use an abundance of caution in making sure that our children and our schools are safe. so we very clearly were there to help the l.a. usd in any way we could. that's why we deployed police officers which for us is quite frankly a good exercise no matter what in the aftermath of san bernardino. >> mr. mayor, obviously there is

no way a national audience can completely sympathize with how it's felt to be there from the southland to the inland empire after such great tragedy and sadness in san bernardino. i'm quite sure this decision was made with that as part of the backdrop. >> absolutely. there's no question. new yorkers can relate to this in the aftermath of 9/11. it is important for us to all be vigilant, important for us to all continue leading our lives and making sure we go about the daily activities of a city. but i think that of course in the aftermath of the tragedy of san bernardino we want to stand strong for the values we have and the vigilance we need in these trying times. this is not necessarily as some people said the new normal. we have been living this for almost a decade and a half in the united states. but it's important for every day citizens to be able to look around, if they see something out of place, to report that. i don't want, no matter how this plays out, this to send the message of don't speak up or speak out. it is critically important for

law enforcement officials to do their jobs for us to be able to build on those leads and that participation. >> so any moment now we will be hearing from the superintendent of schools in l.a. unified. you are saying, mr. mayor, that given his charge and given the facts at his disposal and the hour that the decision was made and where this e-mail came from, that you have no choice but to support the decision and then -- and offer all the facilities l.a. has to offer. >> absolutely. i think it's always important, we know that so much of the facts of these cases unfold in future days. could it be somebody trying to scare everybody, absolutely. could it have connections with something bigger, absolutely. it is always premature for people to judge one way or the other too early. i think it's very important for law enforcement officials that you can make sure, you know, to do everything you can in your power at the early times. that's what we have done here in

l.a. we are all hoping for the very best and the kids can be back in school tomorrow. >> thank you very much, mr. mayor, for taking time out of what i know is a very busy morning for you. eric garcetti, mayor of the city of los angeles. we are talking about the unified school district of los angeles. over half a million students who started their day with word that there would be no school today. robocalls went out to all the known numbers for all the adult households representing all of the students in l.a. unified schools this morning. not all those calls went out as planned. not all of them were received and not all of those calls came in in time. for a lot of families, working parents, long distances to cover on the way to school, long bus routes, the children had already left home. now really, if you are a working

parents with no other choice, you say work in the center of the city in l.a., home is a long way away, you have to rely on the good hearts and hands of neighbors and friends to take care of one another on a day like this. the threat came in in the early morning hours and to our folks, let me know if pete williams is available in our d.c. newsroom. pete is available. pete, you can help me run through and review some of this. again, we realize this easiest game in the world is monday morning quarterbacking. the toughest thing, however, is being in a position of responsibility for people's lives and livelihoods and making a tough call based on the evidence in front of you. while there is disagreement between public officials in new york and l.a. as to whether this was a credible threat, l.a. acted upon it if indeed the text was the same, new york did not act upon it. that is the story we are covering at this hour.

>> right. what we are told is we don't -- we haven't actually seen the two messages so we can't conduct a concordance and see whether they are exactly the same wording. but what we are told now by law enforcement official is the messages had the same i.p. address, the same internet protocol address meaning they came from the same source. they had similar wording, we know, and one of the things that officials have talked about both in california and in new york is that the wording seemed not to be from someone who although this person apparently claimed to be a jihadist, it didn't seem to be someone who really understood islam because of the way the message was phrased, things that were said, the way certain words were not capitalized and it's based on that information in part that caused the new york officials to go one way, the l.a. officials to go the other way. we don't yet know specifically how many -- what the universe of

consultation was here. you talked to the mayor a moment ago but we still don't know the time the decision was made by the school superintendent, whether they knew that this message was sent to at least one other school district in new york and perhaps other school districts in the country, but the point i think you are trying to make here and that we made earlier is these decisions have to be made pretty quickly. you can't wait until 6:00 or 7:00 a.m. to decide whether you are going to open school or not. all this stuff has to be set in motion long before that. and we believe the e-mail was received at about 11:00 last night west coast time. so that left them a matter of hours to try to make this decision based on what limited information they had, given all the recent events, given what the message said would happen. it said there would be bombs concealed in backpacks and packages, it said there would be other acts of violence. while it didn't mention specific

schools, it was specific about the means of attack. so that was one of the factors apparently that the los angeles officials determined they had to act on. now, we know a lot more about this message now about the fact that they believe it came from a computer in frankfurt, germany, but it's doubtful that that kind of information was available to the authorities when they had to make this decision. early this morning. >> pete williams in our washington newsroom, thanks. to our viewers, we are taking in live coverage from knbc, our l.a. station, so any aerial photos they give us, we are putting on the air. we are now going to switch coasts to where pete is and go to the briefing room in the white house. josh earnest, white house press secretary, has just said the president has been notified of this. >> what factors will influence the best way to protect the community, and this is true when there's a national disaster. we talk about the role that the federal government has in

supporting local officials who are responsible for the response. this is also true when talking about strengthening relationships between local communities and local law enforcement, that the role of the federal government is to support those conversations where necessary but the president convened this task force in 21st century policing where we had law enforcement experts, legal experts, academics and others come together around a set of recommendations that are then and have been shared with local law enforcement agencies across the country. those recommendations cannot be imposed on local law enforcement agencies but rather, we can use our resources in the federal government to draw on the expertise of people all across the country and share that information with local authorities, but ultimately, it's local authorities who are responsible for deciding how best those recommendations can be implemented in their community. i think you have another example

of the important role that state and local law enforcement and first responders have in protecting communities across the country. >> reporter: officials in new york received what they are describing as essentially the same threat, quickly determined it was a hoax and decided not to close the schools down. so does the white house feel that the decision that was made by authorities in los angeles was appropriate and is there any federal guidance that's given to schools about you get threats all the time, here are the ones where you need to take specific action? >> well, josh, i'm not going to stand here at this podium and second-guess the decisions that are made by local law enforcement officials in any community across the country. ultimately, these individuals are making these decisions based on information that they have received and based on their knowledge of what they believe is the best interest of the community. obviously, they would know better than anyone else. i can tell you that as these local law enforcement agencies are making these decisions and considering these decisions, they do so with the support and

assistance of federal agencies, in this case the fbi, i know there have been conversations between law enforcement officials in southern california and the fbi on this matter, but again, this is ultimately a decision that was made by officials in los angeles. >> as we have been discussing homeland security in the wake of paris and california, the president has talked a number of times about not giving in to fear and not allowing extremists to change the way that we live our lives. i'm wondering if you can talk broadly about what advice the white house offers citizens about how to strike the balance particularly around the holidays between vigilance and resolve not to give in to fears of terrorism. >> josh, the most important thing in the mind of the president is keeping the american people safe. we certainly do want to encourage everyone to be

vigilant. that includes the citizens of our country. we encourage them if they see something, they should say something. that advice of course continues to be operative. and we encourage local law enforcement and state officials to be vigilant as they go about their basic business of protecting the american people. at the same time, the president is resolute in his refusal to allow this country and our citizens to be terrorized. there are several things the president's doing about that. obviously the first is we have engaged this aggressive campaign to counter isil to degrade and ultimately destroy that organization. that's an indication and should be an indication to you and to the american public that the president and the federal government are cognizant of the risks and are taking appropriate steps to protect the american people. this is after all the president's top priority and i think that as people go about