covering all this cross-country, thank you very much. that is all in on this monday night, the rachel maddow show starts right now, good evening rachel. rachel. good evening chris, thank you very much. hour. happy to have you here. the basic plot is that even though he's a good guy, even though he's our hero, he has to steal the declaration of independence, he has to break into the national archives and steal it but it is for a good reason. it's because he has followed the string of ancient creepy totally nonplausible clues and those clues have revealed to him a big secret, the big secret is that there is a big treasure, and to find the big treasure, you have to follow the treasure map, and the treasure map is conveniently, is prinned in invisible ink on the backside of the declaration of independence.

and so he has to steal the declaration of independence. not because he wants the treasure map that is written in invisible ink on the other side, not just because of that, but because the bad guys have followed the same set of clues that he followed that have figured out the same secret as hill, and the bad guys are going to steal the declaration of independence for bad reasons, so the good guy has to steal it first before they can get to it. that's the plot. i think that's the basic plot. something about free masons. and pyramids, too. i don't know. probably some other parts i missed but honestly in a movie like this, it doesn't really matter what you missed. it just means you'll be fine. >> don't you get, it ben. the strrnt there. >> i refuse to believe that. >> what you thought was the final clue. >> i was only three feet away. >> the declaration of independence. >> a treasure map, on the back of a declaration of intense.

>> the map is invisible. >> why would we make this up? >> where's your proof? >> we don't have it. >> >> get down. >> word of the map is out. >> he will try to steal it. >> the only way to protect the declaration is to steal it. >> steal the declaration of independence? >> that is under surveillance by guards. you will go to prison, you know that, right? >> that's a problem. >> okay, go. >> get out of there, now. >> let's go. where the blood ry you at? >> he's got it. i love the part where nicholas cage would otherwise be shot but he uses the bullet-proof-ish casing for the department declaration of independence as

his body army but he's fine, but how's the document? it took the bullets, maybe? this is the 2004 smash hit movie "national treasure" starting nicholas cage, the weekend before national treasure, the weekend it came out in 2004, i have to tell you, this movie beat the sponge bob square pants movie which came out the same weekend. it beat even that blockbuster, for the number one spot in the u.s. box office. despite the fact that national treasure was viewed pretty universally as absolutely ridiculous, it ended up grossing like $350 million wordwide. even though it cost an astonishing $100 million to make, it still made a quarter billion in profit on top of that, which again is especially amazing when you consider the plot of this thing really is something like something, something free masons, something, something invisible

ink, something, something america, happy ending. there's not a lot to like string you along here. it's pretty ridiculous. the "washington post" referenced this movie, "national treasure" in some of the recent reporting on the current criminal investigation involving former president trump, specifically the recent revelations that he apparently absconded from the white house with documents he is not supposed to suppose, including national security document, highly classified materials and in general tons of stuff that is not supposed to be stuffed into a dead room bedroom closet@at his florida house where he rents out rooms to guests. all supposed to be at the national archives and the "washington post" pointed out in the minds of many, if not most americans, when you think of the national archives, if you have an image of that in your mind, maybe you think of beauty shops like this, maybe you have a family field trip to washington, d.c. and you've seen that

building some day, but just as likely, you think about that nicholas cage movie, the building where nicholas cage stole the declaration of interception and then used it as a bullet shield while running from the bad guys who were going to steal the treasure. there is a big national archives facility in washington. it's recognizable from the outside. also from the inside, it's got the famous rotunda and the public vaults and the big national archives museum. but that's not the only place the national archives is. there are major national archives facilities in seattle and st. louis, and fort worth, texas, and kansas city, and new york city and riverside, california, and atlanta, and bloomfield, colorado. a whole bunch of other places as well. the archives contain national federal records centers in cinematic nicholas cage action movie worthy locations like lenexa, kansas, and

pittsburghfield massachusetts, and lorraine ohio and lee's summit missouri. the national archives isn't just one headquarters staying in washington. it is a big agency that has extra small, small, medium, large, and extra large facilities literally all over the country from coast to coast. national archives as an agency is also responsible for more than a dozen presidential libraries. everybody from herbert hoover through to donald trump, although donald trump's library is a presidential website. thanks to trump though, they have had to the national archives facility in hoffman estates, illinois, because that's where the national archives is keeping records from the obama administration. national archives keeps records in hoffman estates, illinois, those records were ultimately made accessible through the obama presidential library. and they've now had to increase

the police presence at that facility. after the fbi executed a search warrant earlier this month, to go seize classified documents and other materials that trump was supposed to give back to the national archive, trump not once, not twice, but three times made statements online that president obama was somehow the real villain, that he, trump had, done nothing wrong, but obama had taken millions of documents, tons of classified stuff he shouldn't have taken, to his home, president obama's home should be raided. all of that from trump is just, you will be shocked to hear this but is 100% bull-pucky, the national archives actually has all of obama's presidential records, he doesn't have any of them himself, let alone highly classified stuff stashed in his gold painted bedrooms like some other former president, and nevertheless when trump made those claims online about former president obama and his materials from the national

archives, police say they noticed a spike in apparently hostile threatening online chatter about the obama presidential library national archives facility in suburban hoffman estates, illinois. and so, according to the "washington post," police had to increase their patrols there at that national archives building. and that is in keeping with what we now know is an overall increased threat environment toward national archives facilities and national archives staff. ever since it emerged that trump is under criminal investigation from a number of things, potentially violating the espionage act, an investigation that was started after the national archives told trump that he had a bunch of their material and that he refused to hand it over, that apparently has been enough to make the national archives the enemy of trump supporters. nbc news has now obtained a letter from the head of the national archives to all archive

staff, all across the country, it says in part, quote, the national archives has been the focus of intense scrutiny for months, this week especially, with many people ascribing political motivation to our actions. we have received messages from the public accusing us of corruption, and conspiring against the former president, or alternately, congratulating us for bringing him down. neither is accurate or welcome. for the past 30-plus years as a national archives career civil servant i have been proud to work for a uniquely and fiercely nonpolitical government agency known for its integrity around its position as an honest brocker this. position is in establishing laws in a culture i hold dear and i know you do, too. our fundamental interest is always in ensuring that government records are properly managed, preserved, and protected to ensure access to them fort life of the republic. that is our mission and what motivates us as we proceed to uphold the public trust. i thank all of you for that

mission and your professionalism and integrity and in carrying it out in a dil diligent manner and we will continue to do our work without fear or favor in the service of our democracy. that letter going out from the head of the national archives to all nationwide staff of that very large agency. that letter going out as "the washington post" reports, quote, since the fbi's searched former president trump's home to recover classified documents the national archives has become the target of a rash of threats and vitriol. trump's recent actions have whipped his followers into a fervor against the national archives. how can you be in a federal reserver against the national ar -- how can you be in a fervor against the national archives? even in that ridiculous movie national treasure where the most insane things are made to seem super suspicious and sinister, the clues are on the dollar bill, there the national archives isn't bad. i mean, the national archives is

where we keep our country's documents. it's the filing cabinet. it's the library. how can you be mad at the library? oh wait. oh, yeah, that's what we're doing now. hysterical culture posturing from the political right is shutting down american libraries now and children's story times at libraries are being targeted for violence and intimidation from the right and school board meetings are turning into scenes of violence and intimidation and harassment as well. and elections workers being threatened and attacked and doxxed and harassed. and public health officials and local public health officers and doctors and nurses, and teachers. depending what the hot topic this week is on the right, some new group of americans working in some aspect of public service is about to start getting

threatened and doxxed and harassed. it's everything that we cover now. we just had that interview last week with dr. anthony fauci on the occasion of his announcing his retirement after serving seven different presidencies, nearly 50 years in public service. dr. fauci never before now had to have a security detail. he has to now because of all the threats to him and his family. below a national figure like that, public health officials, local, city, county, state public health officials all over the country hounded out of their jobs, healthcared, causing the largest professional exodus in modern american history in the middle of our largest public health threat in a century. the elections office in a texas county, the whole office, every worker in the elections office, all resigning this month en masse because they can't handle the threats and harassment of them. for their terrible crime of working like normal public

servants to administer totally normal elections. former president trump's social media company posting a link to the unredacted search warrant for mar-a-lago. unredacted in the sense that the one that they posted didn't black out the names of the individual fbi agents who signed off on some of that documentation. after that a trump white house staffer posted personal identifying information for those fbi agents and their families. so trump supporters could hound them and threaten them and intimidate them and target them. the fbi and the department of homeland security having to send out a nationwide alert about a spike in threats to federal law enforcement officials of all kinds. the judge who signed off on the search warrant at mar-a-lago needing security after his address was posted online and trump supporters started threatening him and his synagogue. that's nice. now apparently it's the national archives staff.

the national archives. i mean, talk about the case that proves the point, right? if the federal government were a zoo, the national archives would be like the lop eared bunnies exhibit, the cute little vegetarian monkeys so small they could sit in a teaspoon. i mean, even if you want to make the national archives a pulse-pounding source of great excitement, it will cost you $100 million to make that movie and it's going to require nicholas cage and it still won't get you nicholas cage and it's going to be too ridiculous to take seriously even for a second. but in this political environment on the right they can generate a murderous rage about the national archives apparently or the fbi or school boards or librarians or teachers or doctors or county public health boards or the little old ladies who work at the polls on election day. no one is beyond being

threatened, doxxed, harassed, driven out of public service. it is hard to stay a democracy just in a practical level. it is hard to stay a democracy when all forms of public service, large and small, all jobs in the public life of our democracy come with threats of violence. you can't long hold free and fair elections when it takes bravery to be a poll worker. it should not take bravery to be a poll worker or a file clerk at the archives or an immunologist. the threat of political violence takes normal people out of public life. which puts you on a very fast track to the end of democracy at a very practical level. the news today has been dominated by one of the former president's allies in the u.s. senate promising if trump is indicted for these crimes he is being investigated for there will be, in his words, riots in

the street. senator lindsey graham is promising that. he is not speaking out against it saying i hope this doesn't happen and i need to tell my fellow americans i can sense this might be coming and it's wrong. nothing like that. he is basically promising that's going to happen and wielding that as a threat against the justice department. hey, if a guy on our side is arrested for crimes, we are going to burn the country down. this is the party that wants to be known as the law and order party. the news also dominated for the last couple of days by a lot of details and i think kind of fuzz-ifying reporting what is happening with the documents that the fbi took back from mar-a-lago. the request from trump for a special master to review those documents and a florida judge considering the special master request and the filings today,

including the filing from the justice department to that judge about the special master and what the justice department has looked at already. i mean, for the people directly involved in this, i'm sure all of the minutia, the ins and outs are fascinating. i think it's easy to lose the forest for the trees on a legal tangent like this one. this fight over the special master thing, what this is, is the trump side trying to delay the justice department in its ability to use the documents that they took from mar-a-lago as part of their ongoing criminal investigation. they are trying to delay it and make it more complicated. on the other side the justice department has to wait to hear from the judge exactly what kinds of rules and procedures they have to follow in order to use these documents from mar-a-lago in their ongoing criminal investigation. we expect tomorrow the justice department will make a big long 40-page filing to the judge hearing this dispute about why they think it should be more simple and straightforward, even though thump thinks it should be

more complicated and slower. that's basically it. how fast and under what circumstances does the justice department get to use the documents that he took in the search warrant towards building their criminal case. and you can get into the weeds if you want to. this can be made to seem more complicated but that's what it boils down to. the trump side wants to make it more slow and complicated to use those materials. the d.o.j. doesn't want that, but in the end, they will do whatever the judge says, so the judge will say something. that's it. despite all the ink that that dispute received today, despite all the ink that is definitely going to receive tomorrow, despite all the ink this received over the weekend, i do think it's a fairly easy to understand dispute. we will have to wait to see what the judge says. beyond that sort of tempest in the teapot, i think there are two other things that seem more interesting and more important

to watch right now. one of them is definitely a wait and see thing that we sort of can't push the string on at all. we will just find out when it happens. but the other is something we are going to try to get answers on tonight. the wait and see one is this little reporting from "the washington post." post says, quote, the work of the national archives may not yet be done. some national archives officials believing that there might still be more records missing. now, this is in this post article where they say they spoke to 14 current and former national archives employees and trump advisors and historians and people familiar with what's going on in the cases. 14 sources. one apparently told "the post" there are officials at the archives who think now even after that search warrant was executed by the fbi at mar-a-lago archives officials still believe trump is holding more documents. he is still hiding more

documents that he effectively stole from the government. now, nbc news has not matched that reporting from "the post." as far as we know, no other news organization has either. if that's true, if after the, you know, the pleading letters from the national archives and the contact from the justice department and the subpoena from the justice department and then the search warrant being executed by the fbi, if after all of that there is still more that he is hiding, that's bananas and "the washington post" reports that national archives officials believe there is more. that's definitely worth watching. that is sort of a wait and see. but, wow, if true. and then there is the other thing that i really think is worth watching and it concerns the intelligence community. nbc news was first to obtain a letter from the director of national intelligence explaining how her office is getting involved in this now in two different ways. first of all, the director of national intelligence is

apparently doing a classification review of these materials that trump took and was hiding at mar-a-lago. now, what is a classification review? why is the director of national intelligence doing that, and what are the implications of that classification review for the broader case? i don't know. we are about to find out on this program tonight. secondly though, the national intelligence director is, according to nbc news, also doing something that's basically a damage assessment. quote, odni, the office of the director of national intelligence, will lead an intelligence community asesment of the potential risks to national security that would result from the disclosure of the relevant documents. so as federal prosecutors and the fbi are about to get from this florida judge the rules of the road in terms of how they can use the material they seized from trump in this criminal

investigation, as the national archives contends with threats from trump supporters and contends with the prospect that even now trump is still hiding more documents even after the search warrant was executed, as those things move forward the head of the intelligence community is somehow reviewing the classified nature of material trump took and assessing the damage to our national security from what he took. that seems really important to me. it's not like an invisible ink treasure map on back of the search warrant, but it seems important and we are going to get help sorting out what that means with somebody who really knows how these things work. that's next.

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can we at least split it? nope. advanced security that helps protect your devices in and out of the home. i mean, can i have a bite? only from xfinity. nah. unbeatable internet. made to do anything so you can do anything. at xfinity, we're constantly innovating. and we're working 24/7 to connect you to more of what you love. we're bringing you the nation's largest gig speed network. available to more homes than anyone else. and with xfi complete, get 10x faster upload speeds. tech upgrades for your changing wifi needs. and advanced security at home and on the go to block millions of threats. only from us... xfinity. in late 2016 the top official at the u.s. justice department who was specifically in charge of national security matters was a woman named mary mccord.

being the national security chief at doj is an important job even in normal times, but in late 2016 that was a colossally important job doing totally unprecedented things. as the justice department began its unprecedented investigation into this national security crisis in which russia decided to interfere in our election in order to support their favored candidate for president. when the justice department had to send the acting attorney general and a top national security official to the white house in 2017 to warn them that their incoming national security advisor was having secret communications with the russian government, which hes what lying, which he was lying about, the people who went to the white house to communicate that message about mike flynn was sally yates and this national security official mary mcchord. over a long career in public

service under presidents of both parties, she served as a federal prosecutor, an assistant u.s. attorney, deputy chief of appeals in the head of the criminal division in the d.c. attorney's office before becoming top national security and counterintelligence official at main justice during the obama administration. one of her duties was to oversee the justice department unit that is now investigating former president trump's alleged mishandling of classified documents. with that experience that is perhaps no other -- there is perhaps no other former official better equipped to talk about what a justice department investigation into donald trump for potential national security threats really looks like. and that's what makes me delighted, honored to tell you now that we're being joined by mary mccord. former assistant attorney general for the d.o.j., currently serves as a fell loy of the george washington program on extremist. thank you so much for joining us tonight. it is an honor to have you here. >> thank you. nice to be here, rachel.

>> so, i feel like part of what is difficult as -- in reporting on and just trying to be a well nhl citizen on national security matters, particularly when they intersect with intelligence, is that it is really hard to check things that we hear about from the intelligence community. it's really hard to get second sources on stuff. it's really hard to get official verification with a lot of things because it's by necessity a pretty opaque world. given that, what can you tell us about what odni is doing right now? they say they are doing a classification review and also a damage assessment about these documents that were taken from the former president. can you shed any light for us on what those terms mean and what it means they are really doing? >> sure. and i think it's important to focus on this. i am glad that you have because i think there has been so much discussion over the weekend and really the last three weeks about the criminal investigation and just as important is that is

this, the national security threat posed by the mishandling of highly sensitive, highly classified documents. so the first thing that the director of national intelligence said in that letter to congress that her office, the office of the director of national intelligence and the whole intelligence community would do is a classification review. that means they're going to look at documents that have been seized. the classified ones. and really determine, is that level of classification still the right level of classification. because sometimes classified information over the course of time and events in the world is not necessary to be classified anymore or it could be potentially classified at a different level. so that classification review is to make sure or check to see what are these documents, are they all still, do they all still justify the class ficks they have, because as your viewers will know, if they look at the redacted affidavit, some of the unredacted portions

explain the different classification levels of review. so from just damage to national security all the way up to exceptionally grave damage to national security. the second thing that the intelligence community is going to do, i think you have accurately referred to as a damage assessment, which is they are going to be concerned, very concerned figuring out, to the best of their ability, what types of harm to national security could occur if these documents, this information, or the information in these documents, were to fall in to people who are not authorized to receive them. that could be foreign adversaries, foreign spies, opportunists, criminals, et cetera. that means not only looking at the documents themselves and assessing how sensitive are they, but trying to figure out who might have access to them. certainly within mar-a-lago we know this is a place that is open to visitors. there are often foreign guests there.

we know these materials were stored at all different locations within the premises and we know that there have been foreign agents or foreign nationals who have gotten into mar-a-lago under false pretenses before. so some of the things that the department has asked for are the surveillance videos from within the premises to kind of see who is coming and going, who might have had access to the different spaces where these documents were found. they are going to be looking to see do we have compromised confidential human sources who are in danger now. do we have intelligence collection methods that are potentially at risk now. do we have foreign intelligence, meaning intelligence shared with us by our foreign governmental allies that maybe has been compromised. all of these things are going to be concerns. do we have critical technologies that are important to our critical infrastructure, our mass transportation, our

communication systems, our banking systems, all of these things that potentially are at risk. so all of that is going to go into this damage assessment and that will be ongoing. it won't be something that can be finished in a week or two. that's going to be a continuing process. >> and in terms of the damage assessment and the classification review, i'm assuming that most important, in the intelligence world, the most important consequence of those reviews is that intelligence community itself and our allies, to the extent that's relevant, gets to use that information to take protective measures to the extent that they need to, but are the results of those things that could be briefed to the oversight committees, for example, to congressional leadership and to the intelligence committees, to the extent that the classification review or the damage assessment turns up information that is relevant in terms to the damage to national security that was caused or potentially caused by the mishandling of these materials, are the results of

the odni's review, the sorts of things that might be shared with the justice department for the purpose of building their criminal case? >> so there is a lot in that question. i would expect that these intelligence reviews will themselves be classified. so the results of the damage assessment is not going to be public information that we are going to read about in the "washington post" or the "new york times" or listen to on your show. they will be classified. but they are likely to be briefed to the house and senate intelligence committees. those are the committees that oversee intelligence collection that are going to be very, very concerned with the potential damage to national security. they will be briefed to, those entitled to receive that briefing in the intelligence community who will be responsible, as you noted, for sort of taking countermeasures. and that would include people within the justice department. now, the classification review

would also be pertinent to any criminal investigation because whether the documents are national defense information, and i know i'm mixing up terms here, but the terms used in the statute, one of the three statutes that was the basis of the search warrant for which there were probable cause within that affidavit for the search warrant, one of those is a mishandling of national defense information. the words used in the statute are not classified information. it's national defense information. those things tend to be almost one in the same. so highly classified information is almost necessarily ndi or national defense information. it's possible you could have ndi not classified because it hasn't been classified yet. but that classification review will help inform the department of justice as to what ndi was mishandled which would be important to any criminal case charging a violation of that statute.

>> that is in fact super clarifying. i feel like you have taken a bunch of terms that have been conflated and you have disambiguated them in a really clear and helpful way. mary mccord, again, someone with your experience and clarity of expression is really just invaluable to have you here. thank you so much. >> thank you for having me. again, just to summarize there. per reporting from the -- from nbc news, the office of the director of national intelligence is doing that damage assessment in terms of what damage could have potentially been caused here. that was called for by the chairman and the vice chairman, the democratic and republicans, and republican who are the head of the senate intelligence committee, that damage assessment, but also the classification review, which as mary mccord said could very much impact what charges, if any, are ultimately brought against whoever is deemed to be responsible for this mishandling of national security material.

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every search you make, every click you take, every move you make, every step you take, i'll be watching you. the internet doesn't have to be duckduckgo is a free all in one privacy app with a built in search engine, web browser, one click data clearing and more stop companies like google from watching you, by downloading the app today. duckduckgo: privacy, simplified. ever looked at a canister of table salt? it usually says on the label it is iodized, meaning added iodine to the salt even though there isn't a natural place you find iodine. it's a mineral we need as humans and you can get it from food. it's found in seafoods and dairy products, but not something that our bodies make on their own.

we need iodine, but to get it we need to ingest it. we need to get it from food or from some kind of supplement. and about 100 years ago we started adding iodine to this commonly used thing, to table salt in this country, because broadly speaking, americans weren't getting enough iodine on our own. many people had deficiencies. the result of that was lots of people were having thyroid problems. the thyroid gland is the part of the body that takes in iodine. if you have an iodine deficiency, that causes thyroid-related problems which can be very serious health consequences. once they starting adding it to table salt it had a big public effect. iodine deficiency plummeted. thyroid problems related to iodine deficiency plummeted. that's why our table salt is iodized to this day. causes no harm and lots of good.

and so even if you don't know much about how minerals work in the body, because we have all been eating iodized table salt for a while, we all kind of know this connection between this mineral iodine and the thyroid gland. well, turns out the other circumstance in which that is a handy thing to know is the circumstance of radioactive fallout. in the event of a nuclear disaster, a nuclear blast, a dirty bomb, a bomb laced with radioactive material or leak or explosion at a nuclear power plant, there is a few different kinds of radioactive particles that are likely to be released. cesium and strontium are two that you might hear about in the context of radioactive fallout. they are two of the really bad ones. if you are exposed to radioactive strontium, your body treats it like calcium which means terrible things for your bones and your bone marrow and your blood and ultimately a risk of all kinds of cancer.

strontium and cesium are terrible. but the most common isotopes associated with a nuclear power plant catastrophe are two different kinds of radioactive iodine. and we know from our, you know, elementary school level table salt understanding of basic biology that it's the thyroid that takes up iodine in the body. and that's where this matters. in the event of a radiation disaster where people are exposed to radioactive fallout, one of the immediate and most common risks is lots of people will get thyroid cancer because one of the most common things released in radioactive fallout are radioactive iodine. we absorb it, we take it into our thyroids. if it is radioactive iodine, we are going to get thyroid cancer because of it. it's a scary concept, i know. everything with radiation and

nuclear accidents is terrifying. even so, just a little bit of understanding is helpful because just like with table salt, just a little bit of understanding is enough to get you to an understanding of this one practical consequence. again, we need iodine in our bodies. we absorb iodine in our thyroid gland. but we don't do so infinitely. the thyroid takes in iodine but the thyroid can only take in so much. it can become saturated. once it's saturated it won't take in any more. so you see where this is going, right? in the event of a radiation disaster where lots are people will be exposed to radioactive fallout, one of the things you do in that circumstance is make sure that people have iodine tablets. that they can take right away before they're exposed to any fallout. if you take an iodine tablet your thyroid is saturated.

when the radioactive iodine comes your way, your thyroid is already full. you will avoid getting thyroid cancer. the cdc explains it this way. think of filling a jar with blue marbles. if you then pour green marbles over the jar, there won't be any room for them inside the jar. they will just spill out. nobody should proactively dose themselves with iodine like this as a matter of course. this is a circumstance where there is a nuclear disaster on your doorstep. but if there is a nuclear disaster on your doorstep it is a good form of protection to have on hand. and as of this past friday iodine pills are now being distributed in ukraine in the areas surrounding the zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. it's europe's largest nuclear power plant. and officials are now officially giving out those iodine pills to anybody who lives within a 30-mile radius of that nuclear power plant. tens of thousands of people.

people there, men, women and children are being told do not take the iodine pills preemptively. in case of an accident or disaster, radiation exposure, take these to protect yourself. unfortunately, that is a very practical concern right now. russian forces continue to control-ish that nuclear plant. it is of course in the middle of a war zone where there is constant shelling posing huge risks to the facility. the plant was disconnected from the power grid late on friday. it was later reconnected. that disconnection from a power source could have brought about disaster by other means. ukraine is having to do something very simple, very practical, and very terrifying in equal measures. we will talk about the practicalities about it and the risks here next. stay with us.

james acton is the co-director of the nuclear policy program at the carnegie endowment for international peace. he joins us now. i appreciate you taking time to be here tonight. thank you. >> thanks for having me on. >> so ukraine is reportedly starting a counter offensive against russia. russia. there is now state department data that shows that russia is running terrifying camps inside russia to which they apparently are forcibly deporting lots of ukrainian civilians. the headlines are all very worrying. there is a lot to worry about in the russia/ukraine war. as a nuclear expert i want to

take your temperature as to how worried you are that we might have a nuclear accident or radiation disaster at this huge nuclear plant in zaporizhzhia. >> i am genuinely worried about that. nuclear plant is not designed to be in the middle of a war zone. i think people have an image of a missile hitting the core of a reactor and disbursing radiation. that's unlikely. there is the cooling equipment for the plant which is potentially exposed and vulnerable and deliberately or accidentally that could be hit in a war, sparking an accident sequence that leads to a large release of radiation. >> so the cooling equipment, which again this is a plant that makes power. but the plant requires power to keep the cooling equipment going. could you explain why that is such a point of vulnerability? >> yes. so the core of a reactor

produces very large amounts of radioactivity. that becomes very hot and that heat has to be taken somewhere. and so, you need, this kind of nuclear power plant, you need to be cooling it actively. you have electricity connections to the outside world. in the event that those fail, you have emergency diesel generators on site. zaporizhzhia is also connected to a thermal power plant. something like coal or gas that's an extra source of electricity. hot water from inside the plant is basically straight up in the air in so-called spray ponds. in order to cool it before the water is recycled. all of this critical equipment related to cooling is outside of the core of the plant. and one could imagine an accident sequence perhaps involving shelling and fires and firefighters unable to get to the site that could lead to the destruction of the equipment,

heat build up in the core and eventually what we saw into fukushima with the melting of nuclear fuel and the dispersing of radiation. >> are you hopeful about the u.n. investigators who are arriving at the plant this week? >> i am very glad the u.n. is going in. the iaea is going in, rather. we shouldn't be -- we should be realistic about what they can achieve. they are inspectors. it's their job to report on what's going on in the plant to assess the safety and security features on the plant and to report back. they don't have a magical way of defending the plant or repairing broken equipment. and so ultimately it's up to russia to behave responsibly, to agree to demilitarize the area around the plant. unfortunately given the fact that russia has already invaded ukraine i am not optimistic that they will start behaving responsibly at this juncture.

>> james acton, sir, thank you for your time tonight. scary stuff. good to talk to you. we'll be right back. policy y need? now you can sell your policy - even a term policy - for an immediate cash payment. we thought we had planned carefully for our retirement. but we quickly realized we needed a way to supplement our income. if you have $100,000 or more of life insurance, you may qualify to sell your policy. don't cancel or let your policy lapse without finding out what it's worth. visit coventrydirect.com to find out if your policy qualifies. or call the number on your screen. coventry direct, redefining insurance.

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only from us... xfinity. that's going to do it for me tonight. alex wagger will be here tomorrow. "way too early" with jonathan lemire is up next. based on mishandling classified information, after what happened with hillary clinton, there will be frustration and i fear violence. i reject violence. i'm not calling for violence. violence is not the answer. >> that's senator lindsey graham of south carolina, doing some cleanup, after saying on sunday that thrill there will be riots if the former president is prosecuted. meanwhile the push for a special master by trump's legal team appears to have been undercut by diligent fbi agents.