joining me now, we'll go back to senatoring angus king. he was at yesterday's fbi briefing. sir, you can hear me now, correct? >> i can. i certainly can. >> hopefully you were able to hear part of pete's reporting there on what he's been working on this morning piecing the dots together of how russia informed the fbi and also informed the cia and how this all went down in the beginnings of 2011. we do know that the briefing you attended was classified. two reports are quoting senators who say the fbi was alerted more than once by the russians about tamerlan tsarnaev. if you were able to hear pete's reporting, does that give you more questions about where the disconnect was or does that help clear anything up? fill in blanks from the briefing you had. >> i'm not sure there was a disconnect. i have to be careful because it was a classified briefing. i have to be careful about what i say. essentially i think it's important to put this into context. we get something like 20,000 tips a year about people who might be potentially involved in terrorism and they're followed up as the

senator angus king is an independent senator from maine who caucuses with the democrats. senator king, you're an independent guy. i want your views on what you see and smell on the floor of the united states senate. chuck todd said a lot of these senators, 31 of them, basically are afraid to even have a debate because when they vote to have a debate, the nra says, you're one of the bad guys. >> well, i think you got to break that down into two issues. number one, you guys have looked for the last five minutes at the glass as half empty. 68 senators voted on one of the most controversial and contentious issues in recent american life. 68 senators voted yes knowing that the nra was going to score that vote. and i think that's a pretty positive development. when i went in there today to vote, i wasn't sure whether we had the 60 votes. 68 voted yes. i think that's a good sign. you're talking about republican primaries. it's a narrower issue that than. it's the number of people who vote in a republican primary or in a democratic primary for that matter. up in maine last summer

let's bring in senator angus king. he's a member of the senate intelligence committee.briefed about what is going on. senator, thank you very much for joining us. you hear what we're discussing, that they found the lid to a pressure cooker they believe was used in the construction of the bomb. what were you told about what they're hoping about where this leads? >> well, this is one of the few times i can actually answer that question. because i can tell you that in our briefing we didn't get any information that you don't have. but you know, they're just tracing leads all over the place. i did want to mention one thing from hearing from the mr. mueller, the head of the fbi yesterday. there are thousands of pictures out there. and they're probably on somebody's iphone from the picture who left the bomb. the number is 1-800-call-fbi. 1-800-call-fbi. if you've got a picture on your phone of somebody finishing the race or in the vicinity of the finish line, that's where a lot of this evidence is going to come from. security cameras, pieces of the bombs, they're sifting thro

. >> well, you know, that's exactly what senator angus king was saying this morning, which is, you're looking for tipoffs, based on, in essence, material that's covered by the first amendment. there's nothing criminal about posting on your website distasteful things that glorify jihad. but here is an issue, though. i guess that some members are asking about. if you have a person who's in this -- in your database, you know, is there -- should there be some way to, for example, forget tamerlan for a second. and look at, instead, think about this from the anwar awlaki model where the united states began to focus on him as a person who was influential to terrorists in this country. so should there be a broader list of people like him? some of whom are, you know, espousers of these radical violent statements. tamerlan was posting some of this material on his website. should they have been looking at it from the other end? here's a list of people that we think are -- are, you know, dangerous out there on the internet. let's watch and see who comes and downloads that. again, that is a very d

i was talking with angus king the other day, angus, now our colleague here in the, a great addition, used to be governor of maine. we were comparing notes how we work with the legislature. we actually did pretty well together. one of the keys, not my idea but an idea that i think started with pete dupont when he was governor years ago, also mike hassle when he was governor and by me, every tuesday when the legislature is in session in delaware, they are usually in session tuesday, wednesday and thursday, most weeks between january and june but i would have lunch with the legislative leaders, democrats and republicans from the house and the senate. we would have somebody from my administration and my staff, and we would have lunch together. sometimes we would talk about issues. sometimes we would talk about sports or whatever else was the topic of the day. we would always have lunch together. we did it week after week, month after month year after year. you get to know people and get a sense of trust. one of the keys for our success in delaware is we sort of like each other. democrats

senator jack reed, and senator angus king, as well as the u.s. select committee on intelligence.'ve talked about other people have talked about the eerie coincidence. there's no reason to think this is in any way related to anything that happened at boston, right? >> there seems to be no correlation between what happened yesterday at the mail facility and what happened in boston. completely independent activities. >> okay. as far as what we're now talking about, senator, with the -- with what happened in boston, are we -- we went from we're all americans and we're rallying around it, but now we're starting to wonder how it happened, i guess. and with so much security, at this point, does it indicate that there was some type of lapse in your view, senator? >> i think the boston police did a very thorough job. they swept the route. i think they are probably looking back at things they could and will do differently. in fact, not just the boston police, but anyone managing a major event like this. particularly the open access of this venue. and i think also too, there's a factor that