>> did the president's order reed capture or kill or both or just one of those? >> the authorities we have on bin laden are to kill him. and that was made clear. >> and lawmakers get a cia briefing today on the intelligence. did waterboarding provide a key lead in the hunt? >> there is information, published information in the various newspapers and media that the information about this courier was an intercept of conversations between two individuals. that's as far as i know. so far i know of no information that was obtained which would have been useful that -- by "enhanced interrogation". >> lots of questions about what pakistan knew about bin laden's hideaway. we'll talk exclusively with pakistan's former president, pervez musharraf. and the impact on the war on

terror with israel's ambassador michael orrin. also, this hour, budget hang-up. the gang of six stalls on a long-term plan to tackle the deficit. and daniels, huntsman, santorum who is next to step up for 2012? good day, i'm andrea mitchell live in washington. first to the white house where the president is now said to be leaning against increasing -- releasing pictures of bin laden's body as we learn more about what happened in the commando raid. nbc's chuck todd, chief white house correspondent, joins me now. co-host of "the daily rundown." what is the latest today, leaning against, leaning for and what are they saying about the picture release? >> reporter: look, the white house is still -- one thing we do know is that some definitive decision is going to come today. the last thing they want is this dragout and have this should they or shouldn't they? we know everybody on capitol hill is weighing in on this at this point and so there is a belief that they need to have a sort of -- some cloture on this

decision. we know that secretary clinton, secretary gates, defense and state department both seem to be arguing against a release, really it is leon panetta at the cia who has been the most outspoken in the national security team of being in favor. andrea, you know, we love to have our little spidey senses come up sometimes. we know the president is doing an interview with another network for an interview that will air later this weekend. something tells me we're going to hear from the president about this decision pretty soon. >> i know from my conversations with white house officials, you certainly have heard this, they're very frustrated. they have scored a huge victory in the warren terror by anybody's count. i talked to republicans and democrats in the last 24/48 hours. at the same time, all the questions being asked because they did rush to get the story out. they wanted to get it out before it was leaked from pakistan, from all of the spin we get all the time from the pakistan

intelligence services. and you can understand their frustration. the other thing, joe biden speaking at the atlantic council last night, pointed out there is another victory here in terms of being able to trust congress. let's watch. >> there was such an absolute, overwhelming desire to accomplish this mission that although for over several months we were in the process of planning it and there were as many as 16 members of congress who were briefed on it, not a single, solitary thing leaked. i find that absolutely amazing. >> reporter: how about that? >> yeah. dianne feinstein was saying to me yesterday on our show that she first was briefed on this in december. and that they had 24/7 eyes on it from overhead photography, probably from a drone, a predator drone. all this at the same time there

is a bump up, chuck, you follow polls closer than anyone i know. the "new york times"/cbs poll shows a bum up to 57%. what do you expect to see in terms of the politics of all of this. >> reporter: i think short-term. look at the right track, wrong track number. this is one of those moments where americans will be feeling good, collectively. and that number, the question is how long does it stay that way. there is still real economic drags as far as the average american is feeling when it comes to filling up their tank, when it comes to looking for a better job and over time, that always is going to be the thing that weighs most heavily long-term on the minds of americans. this is one of those collective moments. so not surprising to me we'll see a bump. one of the things that has changed between now and three or four years ago, we as a society seem to digest information so quickly that the bumps are

usually more shorter lived now. >> and i think as you've just pointed out earlier, we'll see something coming out of the white house. you've got the feel of the place. >> reporter: something is happening. i they will we'll hear about why -- the president's reasoning on whatever decision he ultimately makes. >> stay tuned. chuck todd, thank you very much. pakistan, high level officials including a top member of pakistan's intelligence agency arrived at bin laden's compound today. nbc's tazin mahmad is there. what is the reaction there from the government officials? what are you seeing? >> reporter: you know, there have been -- i think they have been pretty stunning. they have said -- they have been quite quiet but when they have spoken, they said there was an intelligence failure. technically, it seemed to be very embarrassed by what has happened. high ranking military officials

turned up here to have a look. the entire area was closed off. we weren't allowed in. we were only allowed just on the main road that i've been doing my reports from. and we were only allowed back in in the last four or five hours or so. what also has been released today or what we have been showing you today is footage from inside the compound. and when you look at that footage it quite remarkable. it is a side building apparently, not main -- not bin laden's main residence. but the fact that so many people were in this tiny, tiny place, from the outside, you think it is quite large, it has been described as a luxury mansion but it is not a luxury mansion by western standards. >> what about the reaction from the neighborhood? you talked to a lot of people in the last two days. >> almost every -- literally every person i spoke to said really, this really happened here? i've been stopped a number of times walking around here as a

reporter saying, you know, was bin laden really in there? people do not believe it. they're not buying it. what the evidence they have seen so far is not enough as far as they're concerned. so all the white house is debating whether or not to release his photos, you know, one of the things that one needs to consider is what the reaction of pakistan will be. there is a lot of talk about it enflaming tensions, enflaming tensions. but i'm not sure whether it will settle conspiracy theories or reignite them. >> thank you very much. and joining us now on the phone is former pakistani president pervez musharraf who says that the u.s. raid to take out bin laden violated sovereignty of his -- of pakistan. mr. president, thank you very much for joining us. what about the questions that are being raised about pakistan's alleged complicity. there is a lot of ferment on capitol hill today with congress demanding answers. can you respond to that? >> indeed. i think the incident, the elimination of osama is an event

which ought to appease everyone in pakistan as well as the people of the world. however, it casts a lot on pakistan military and isi. i understand that because he being there in the town of abbottabad is surprising. it surprises me also. however, having said that, i am very sure that there is no complicity involved in this. i cannot imagine that isi high command or army were abetting or harboring osama bin laden there. that cannot be the case. however, it is a case of acute failure of intelligence, which i think needs to be investigated. and all responsible need to be -- >> when i first met you, general

musharraf, you were the head of the army at one point and have the military background. you better than anyone would know just how embarrassing this is, the pakistan military academy down the road, the army chief general was there. only last week, a week ago saying that pakistan had broken the back of the militants. so do they have to re-examine all of their assumptions? >> absolutely. very, very embarrassing. no doubt about it. it is shockingly embarrassing. but, again, i cannot believe that there was, as you said, complicity involved in this. >> it does seem, though, this compound is so large. it sticks out like a sore thumb. so why would they not have questioned -- we understand from reporters whose i.d. papers were questioned in the local hotels. they were checked by security several times. how could something this large and so unusual in the neighborhood go unnoticed?

>> well, it can. it can. first of all, we're talking a lot about high walls and barbed wire. in the frontier province, a lot of houses with high wall and barbed wire. therefore this he ey do not ris suspicion. people don't intrude into houses. there are women inside houses in the frontier province. people with high walls, people don't peep inside because it is not correct at all. there are women who -- so that is not done. and i know that i've seen a lot of interview on the television and a lot of people who are around that house being asked whether they knew that osama bin laden was there. they don't know. so if they didn't know who was living there, and i really don't know some people say he was there for years, don't believe

that. even if he was there for whatever duration, if the people around couldn't know, it is possible that isi also did not know. however, i don't want to absolve them of the responsibility of having should have known. >> before i let you go, do you think that the u.s. was wrong to cross the border and penetrate so deeply into pakistan without notifying pakistan? did the u.s. do the right thing in not telling pakistan it was pulling off this raid? >> well, yes. i will say -- i do know the u.s. policy that wherever they had declared that as far as osama bin laden is concerned, that whenever they can't get the actionable intelligence on him, they will act anywhere in the world. that was your policy. that was u.s. policy. doesn't go well with the sovereignty of any other country for that matter. in pakistan, the people's sensitivity of even drones violating our sovereignty is

against. now troops coming in, helicopters and taking action is not acceptable to the people of pakistan and it does violate our sovereignty. and in the past, whenever we acted against many, many dozens of al qaeda operatives, senior ones, including sheikh muhammad, always intelligence cooperation. we cooperated with each other, identifie identified the targets. that is what used to happen. in this case, it was not done. i'm talking on my time, how it was done. and, well, therefore, i would always hear that it was a violation of our sovereignty. it would have been better that we shared and we acted with pakistan forces, they are capable. they can fly at night.

they have helicopters that can fly at night. they have troops which can operate. >> but clearly they -- the u.s. was worried that there would be a security leak, though. >> well, that is unfortunate. that is a lack of trust. this lack of trust and lack of confidence, i don't think it exists in my time. if it exists now, i think it is an acute requirement of developing the trust because i think it divides. if we are to defeat taliban and al qaeda, we have to have trust in each other. >> president pervez musharraf, the former president of pakistan, thank you very much for joining us. >> thank you. still ahead, the threat of a backlash in the middle east. israel's ambassador to the united states joining us. up next, the homeland, will al qaeda try to retaliate for the beth death of bin laden? ♪

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as we glean information from that material, we will make appropriate decisions with regard to who might be added to the terrorist watch list, the no fly list, all those zblingz thi. my guess will be we probably will. >> it may take weeks, weeks or months to analyze all of the intelligence gathered from bin laden's compound. today we learned that some of the information has already been passed to u.s. security agencies back here in the states. nbc news justice correspondent pete williams is here with us. pete, what are they learning? >> reporter: we don't know the details yet. all we know is that janet napolitano said that already some of this information is being passed along to her and other parts of the government, but that she so far based on what she's been told hasn't seen

any need to raise the national terror alert system level. the new threat system that replaced the color codes. our understanding is this is a sort of two-step process. they took the stuff out of bin laden's house, it was taken first to afghanistan where the u.s. military took a very quick look through it, electronically transmitted some information back, then all bundled up and brought back here to the u.s. for a more complete analysis. we also have been told the federal government has put out an all call for anybody who has the highest security level clearance and speaks arabic to help them go through all of this material. it has been described as a mother load of possible intelligence, but i think the better assessment is it is a mother load of stuff. how much of it will turn out to be valuable intelligence has yet to be determined. it does make sense what the the facial recognition and they should not be on the defense. they want to take the offensive. >> interesting too, andrea, there were some calls from members of congress to release the pictures. but not many. and the members who have spoken

up today said dianne feinstein, for example, others said they don't think there is any need to do this. and they do understand the potential backlashes as apparently secretary of defense robert gates and secretary of state hillary clinton have said they think no good can come of releasing the picture. i guess this decision isn't surprising based on the fact that there was no real strong drumbeat for releasing it here in the u.s. >> i think you're absolutely right, pete. you had a joint -- the first joint briefing today for the intelligence and the armed services committees on the hill. that was a very big -- big group with which to canvas and there was no real sentiment for it, just a few members, but not really a consensus for it. >> right. and, of course, the problem is, i think, one of the factors in all of this is that many of the members of congress who have been talking about it, i suspect most if not all of them, have not actually seen the pictures. they were careful to say that while they had a view that either it should or shouldn't be

released, they hadn't seen it, they only had it described to them. apparently it has not been widely circulated, even within the government. >> one thing that came up in the interview that leon panetta did with brian williams is he said that they had discussed eventually releasing the photographs. i'm told that that's in the context of they weren't sure at all. they had no way of knowing they would get facial recognition to the extent that they did, that they would get the 100% dna match. so that was precommando raid. after the raid, they felt they had the goods on bin laden and that they really didn't have to take that extra step. and the president clearly was very much against it. >> you may know the answer to this. i don't. they obviously had thought about the need to take a picture of bin laden after they either killed or captured him to verify that it was him. but i don't know and perhaps you do what the purpose of taking the picture was. one of the purposes was surely so that they could take the photograph, digitally transmit

it to the cia, and use what you were talking about, this computer program that matches known pictures of bin laden with this person that they got in pakistan. and these facial recognition programs analyze the shape of the face, the distance between the eyes, the distance from the eyes to the nose and the mouth and all that sort of stuff to try to see whether it is in fact the same person. and we were told that they did get a match based on that. now, that certainly is one of the reasons they had someone there to take a picture. i don't know if another reason to have that picture taken was so that it could be released afterward. >> or released to friendly intelligence agencies or used to put pressure on other agencies to be more responsive. >> though once you did that, it would probably leak. >> indeed it would. thanks so very much. pete williams on this breaking news that savannah guthrie is reporting from the white house. the president decided not to

release the photographs of osama bin laden and more to come when we come back. and jay carney scheduled to brief at 2:00. you can expect that briefing, you can see they're getting ready, setting the cameras and people posing for pictures in the white house briefing room but it will be jay carney, the white house press secretary at 2:00. or soon thereafter. there's another way to minimize litter box odor: purina tidy cats. our premium litters now work harder to help neutralize odors in multiple cat homes. purina tidy cats. keep your home smelling like home.

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we have breaking news. the president has decided according to savannah guthrie not to release the picture. jay carney will be briefing, now scheduled at 2:00. savannah joins us from the white house. what went in the decision? >> reporter: i think the white house was clearly concerned that releasing the photos, photos that have been described to me as very gruesome, would potentially enflame the muslim world, potentially become an iconic image in the muslim world

that people could rally around. remember, they took such care to bury osama bin laden's body at sea so there wouldn't be a shrine. you don't want a shrine that is a photographic shrine. so there is that. there wasn't -- it seems, a clamoring to get this photograph. there wasn't a lot of skepticism as we understand it. people really doubting, in fact you are osama bin laden's daughter acknowledging yes, indeed, he was dead. it sounds like the president weighed the equities. we decided that the president has decided not to have the photos released. as i mentioned, they are incredibly graphic, now, that alone is not necessarily an obstacle to releasing the photos because we certainly have seen the government release gruesome photos in the past, but nevertheless, these photographs are hard to look at. he was shot in the left eye, as described to me. the photos show a gaping wound over the left eye. there is blood, there is brain tissue visible and i'm told

osama bin laden's face is recognizable from the photographs. >> and, savannah, there was some disagreement among the national security team, but as you point out, secretary of state, certainly the white house, key advisers, but we know that leon panetta had suggested that there was discussion that eventually the photo would be released. let's play the interview. >> the government obviously has been talking about how best to do this. but i don't think there is -- there was any question that ultimately a photograph would be presented to the public. obviously i've seen the photographs. we have analyzed them and there is no question that it is bin laden. >> do you think this puts it to rest because i know people in the white house, i was talking to chuck earlier and those i've spoken to were, to say -- to put it mildly, annoyed that in the aftermath of this successful commando raid against bin laden, and taking down the world's most wanted man, that all these

questions are being raised about the initial narrative and the rush to get information out before the pakistanis put out their own information or bin laden's daughter, others putting out their inaccurate information. >> yeah, i mean, i think that to some degree there is frustration that rather than the focus being on the successful raid, and this daring mission, that suddenly people were talking about will they or won't they release the photos. i think the president making this decision today is an effort to -- can't speak too late to nip it in the bud, but to end this issue so that there won't be this continued speculation about whether these photographs will be released. obviously they were prepared to release the photographs in some quarters and perhaps that's what leon panetta was talking about. it is considered inevitable that somehow, some way the photographs would surface. in any event, the president has decided that when you really just do the upsides versus the downsides, that the upside doesn't outweigh the downside of

releasing these incredibly ghastly photos which may, as we said before, enflame the muslim world. and there have been criticisms about the administration changing the narrative and key respects with regard to whether or not bin laden was armed. and the way it is explained to us is when john brennan, the president's top counterterror adviser was out monday morning, this whole raid was, you know, less than 24 hours old. all the interviews had been done. and it was kind of a fog of war and they since have corrected the record. so they say, look, perhaps we're going on incomplete information at the time, but they moved as quickly as they can to make the record as accurate as they can according to the white house. >> better to fix it quickly inde indeed, savannah guthrie, who broke the story that the president will not be releasing the photos. thank you so much, savannah? >> sure. joining us now, barbara mikulski who has been briefed along with the other members today. it is great to see you.

thank you very much for joining us. >> andrea, it is wonderful. >> your reaction to the decision, senator, not to release the photos? >> well, i support the president's decision. the president has to always weigh what is in the long range national security interests of the united states. i'm sure he consulted not only with his own advisers, but with key allies on the consequences of releasing the picture. and quite frankly, when it comes to conspiracy, if you don't believe what the president said on sunday night, you're not going to believe any picture that the united states government would release. >> they of course did correct the record. they said he was not armed. leon panetta made it clear to brian williams that there was a shoot to kill mission here. if he had come out, they said with his hands up, and said i surrender, i surrender, waving a white flag, maybe they would have taken him into custody. but that was really not going to happen. do you have a problem with that or should we all just say, you know, he's dead and the world's

most wanted terrorist is no longer a threat to humanity? >> well, andrea, like all of america, and even many people in the world, i was really relieved when the president announced sunday night that bin laden was dead. and i recall when as a little girl during world war ii i heard that hitler was dead. and good riddance to him and the evil he unleashed. now i think we have to wait until everybody involved with that riveting, daring, bold action to get bin laden is thoroughly debriefed. we act like everything is instant. this was not a movie for tv. this was a real life drama with our men in harm's way going after the most wanted person in the world. and we need to debrief and then i think really set the record straight. but we need a few more days to get all of that clear. >> senator barbara mikulski,

thank you for joining us. great to see you. we'll have more reaction to the president's decision not to release the photos of osama bin laden coming up after the break. ugh, time to color.

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front to back. with tones and highlights. it's foamtastic! home haircolor, make room for foam haircolor! new nice 'n easy colorblend foam. your right color. as we continue with breaking news, the president has decided not to release the photos of osama bin laden. we're joined now by nbc news capitol hill correspondent kelly o'donnell. kelly, you've been talking to a lot of people out there. peter king notably yesterday without criticizing the white house thought the photos should be released. are there other on intelligence, homeland security, armed services, foreign relations who think it should be released? >> reporter: there have been a couple of schools of thought. many senators said they recognize the value of the photos or a video, any of those sorts of things. as a way to quell any kind of concern. however, they're also saying they're not see a lot of that.

it is not like there are demonstrations in the street questioning whether or not bin laden was actually killed. so it seems to be a multipart answer. today, the phrase i'm hearing is osama bin laden should not be a trophy of the united states. more than one member of congress has said that. and that really plays into the president's decision. we have agreement, but from both republicans and democrats, many who say the president's call is the right one, and those who were supporting the release, peter king, as you mentioned, said it is not that gruesome in his view. and that it is a part of what has been this long ten-year drama with what happened at 9/11. so peter king, who tends to have a very sharp voice on matters of homeland security, he's the chair of the committee on the house side, has been perhaps the most vocal. and when we spoke to dianne feinstein as the intel chair on the senate side, she said she recognized the value of it, thought it would likely happen so did leon panetta, the director of the cia. there was not a groundswell call for the president to do that.

john mccain saying he didn't think it was necessary. and some of the newer members of the senate, properly deferring to the white house, saying they didn't feel it was their place to even register an opinion publicly. they would follow with the white house. it has been closely watched here, a huge subject of discussion. and some members, one saxby chambliss, said he has seen the photos. most members i've talked to have not seen them. >> what about steny hoyer, the democratic leader? >> what in particular there? >> what has he been saying about this today? >> i don't have an answer for you on that. >> you know, i apologize. i just realized now that he said he agrees with the president and that -- at a news briefing while you were rushing over there. >> yes, they were having -- >> sorry. >> no problem. they were having a briefing on a jobs plan that democrats are trying to get some attention on. that's one thing we are seeing

is the shift back to some of the issues that are the bread and butter of capitol hill. but the enormous reaction here, i've been struck by how many members of congress seem to have a different way of describing their own expertise on this when they have come out of the briefings, almost an scaexhale talking about how incredible it was to hear the story of what went on. typically you don't see members of congress in that mode of awe. and we saw that from a number in both parties after they were briefed by the cia director. >> well, you know, one of the things here is that except for smaller groups, most of them don't have full briefings of this kind of -- this is such an unusual raid and the incredible coordination and high tech aspects to this and the narrative we have -- it has been described as riveting. you can imagine that they are really focused on this and, in fact, even though budget talks are going on, and i went to a briefing with paul ryan over at

bloomberg this morning, it is really not the chief focus. everyone is completely absorbed by the successful raid against osama bin laden. >> in the hallways, in the elevators, that's what i've been talking to senators and members of the house about. it is the thing on everyone's mind, and there seems to be an insatiable desire to find out what happened. and i think a distinction between wanting the details and wanting the facts to be as updated and revised as possible. a curiosity versus criticism. i think people wanting to know things like was he armed, not armed, that kind of detail isn't implicitly critical, but a sense of curiosity about wanting to get to the bottom of all of what happened. >> kelly o'donnell taking the temperature on capitol hill. thank you very much. of course, jay carney, should remind you, is going to be briefing. they say it is scheduled at 2:00. we'll bring that to you live and more when we come back on "andrea mitchell reports." [ female announcer ] in the past 10 years

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hi, everyone. i'm tamron hall. we'll hear from white house press secretary jay carney on the breaking news about president obama's decision not to release the pictures of osama bin laden's body. plus, i'll talk to the special agent who oversaw interrogations at guantanamo bay. he is giving his thoughts on the debate over harsh interrogation tactics that some claim may have led to the capture and killing of bin laden. and osama bin laden's will, a kuwaiti paper is claiming that it obtained a copy of his last requests including a message to his own children. >> we continue with breaking news here in washington where the president decided not release the picture of osama bin laden. michael orrin is israel's ambassador to the united states and joins me now. first of all, israel has long experience it in commando raids going back decades.

what about this decision not to release the evidence, the proof. >> good afternoon, andrea, we respect the president's decision. we have a long-standing experience in fighting terror and we make that decision all the time. we do not publish those photographs. >> and what about the larger effect on the region? has israel ramped up its security? do you have concerns that there will be a zawahiri or other al qaeda group trying to retaliate, some sort of one-off operator perhaps trying to come up with some way to respond to what has been a huge setback for the terror movement? >> there is less al qaeda in our immediate area. it is more in southern arabia, afghanistan, and pakistan. but we have been on a heightened alert because of this. and i think the general message to the region has been extraordinary. the message is that the opponents of terror will not forget. they won't forgive and they will hunt down terrorists even if it takes a decade or longer. >> a lot of questions being raised here about pakistan. you've long experienced

intelligence. how could the pakistan int intelligence and military not know what was going on under their nose? >> it is go to be a question the pakistani ambassador is going to have to answer. direct it to him. >> we had him sitting in the chair yesterday, but the question is what about all of the relationships with pakistan. pakistan has a lot to answer to the region, to the world. >> i think it is a concern. it is a concern for the entire world, not just that pakistanis may have connections with islamic terrorist groups, but they are a nuclear power and that is a source of concern for everybody in the region. >> let me ask you about syria. there have been horrendous actions by assad in syria, yet there is a clear impression that the united states, israel and others in the region would prefer the devil they know to what might follow assad. how do you justify that on moral grounds? >> i hear that rumor all the time and i can say that it is untrue. it is not that we prefer the devil we know, we with like to

have -- we would greatly welcome any real progress toward reform in syria and progress leading to genuine democracy in syria. we are not saying devil we know, devil we don't know. >> and just very quickly, i've got it ask you about hamas merging with fattah today, officially, in cairo. has israel lost its chance for peace? you didn't negotiate, some would argue, with fattah, with the group that was much more moderate, now you've got what you consider terrorists as part of the group. >> let me say first that several days ago there was a huge victory against terror in the operation against bin laden. now there has been a victory for terror in the signing of the agreement between the palestinian authority and hamas. hamas is an organization that calls openly for israel's destruction. it calls america the enemy of the palestinian people, calls the american people animals. it is an organization that just over a week ago fired an anti-tank missile at an israeli

school bus. this is hamas. and we have been waiting to negotiate with the palestinians for two years. the palestinian authority hasn't been willing to negotiate with us. we were willing to negotiate today, without preconditions, with anybody who accepts our right to exist and disavows terror. those conditions not just of israel, but the united states and the quartet, if the palestinians meet them, we're willing to talk today. >> ambassador michael oren, thank you very much. to be continued. on the phone with me now is charles wolf who lost his wife in the 9/11 attacks on the world trade center. mr. wolf, what is your reaction to the president's decision not to release the picture? >> i think it was an absolutely correct decision. under no circumstances should those photos have been released. >> and what do you think the impact would have been if the photos had been released? >> the impact would have been far more than slightly inflammatory. here we have a man who has been out of sight for ten years and the only thing we see are images on a video screen of him and that in and of itself was enough

to draw people along. now, the man's been killed. we have picture of his dead body and of course, of the burial at sea. that would have been extremely inflammatory, those images, had they been released would have been used by not just propaganda poster but was you'd see them in protests and riots in the streets, images which would have gone forward for years and been a rallying point essentially think of the power of imagery. think of the power of religious imagery. think of the power of something like jesus christ on the cross who was killed. now you have their figure killed. it would have been there for years and years and years to come. >> charles wolf, we offer our sympathy, our condolences again for the loss, continue tragedy

of 9/11. thank you very much for joining us today. we'll be back with what's happening in the next 24.

breaking news, president obama having decided not to release pictures of osama bin laden. msnbc contributor chris cillizza joins us now. his first going to ground zero tomorrow, first visit to ground zero. obviously this is going to be very much in people's minds. >> incredibly powerful symbolically. we've talked about this before. to the extent there's a symbolic book ending of what happened september 11, 2001, this may be it, president obama, going, spending several hours at site of ground zero, meeting with families of victims. he invited former president george w. bush, on whose watch, september 11th, happened to join him. bush declined. but this is going to be clearly

a moment, and i think -- i think we can all hope a cathartic moment in a way. obviously you can't replace people who have been lost, but a cathartic moment for those who lost people september 11, 2001. >> chris cillizza, thank you. that does for this edition of "andrea mitchell reports." tomorrow i'll be in chicago for education nation on the road live 8:00 p.m. my colleague, tamron hall, has a look at what's next on "news nation." it's got to be jay carney's briefing coming up next. >> following breaking news out of the white house. any minute now, we're going to hear from white house press secretary jay carney about president obama's decision not to release the pictures of osama bin laden. plus, i'll talk to senator udall who says the u.s. needs to reset its relationship with pakistan, after bin laden was found living in that compound near islamabad, not far from the pakistan military academy. he's really critical about harsh interrogation tactics and whether they actually led to

useful information. "news nation" is just minutes away. [ airplane engine whines ] [ grunts ] [ dog barking ] gah! [ children shouting ] [ grunts ] [ whacking piñata ] [ whacking piñata, grunting ]

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right now on "news nation," braking news -- >> this is how conspiracy theories develop. they're not ghoulish, they're not going to scare people off, they're not offensive. >> my initial opinion, it's not necessary to do so. i think there's ample proof that this was osama bin laden. >> a senior white house official says, there will be no pictures released of a dead osama bin lan. we'll go live to the white house for the latest on the president's decision. plus, senators mike udall and kay hagan will join us live to discuss the president's move not to release the bin laden photos. plus,