. >> rose: joining me from washington is david sanger, national security correspondent of the "new york times." walter isaacson president of the aspen institute and from florida, presidential his attorney doris kearns goodwin. from iowa, john dickerson, the chief political correspondent for slate magazine and political director for cbs news. with me is al huntqnews and jon meacham author and historian. joining is with all due respect john -- i'm pleased to have all of them here. take a look at the assessment of this state of the union and what it says about what the president calls the final quarter of his presidency. and i begin with al hunt reaction to this state of the unit and what it said and what it means. >> charlie, thisweeks ago who suffered a disastrous electoral defeat. he's a lame duck president and terrible cycle yet tonight i think he gave one of the best speeches of his president z i thought he was compelling, he was appropriately assertive he was confident. he didn't give a laundry list of 28 different programs. but i think he struck a good balance when you know, a popul

. >> joining me from washington is david sanger. walter isaacson, president of the aspen institute. doris kearns goodwin. john dickerson. al hunt of bloomberg news. also joining me from the set mark halperin and john heilemann. david brooks will join us later. i am pleased to have all of you here. an assessment of what the president calls the final quarter of his presidency. al hunt, reaction to the state of the union? >> charlie, this was a guy 11 weeks ago who suffered a disastrous electoral defeat. and yet tonight, i think he gave one of the best speeches of his presidency. i think he was confident, he did not give a laundry list of 28 different programs. he struck a good balance between a populist rhetoric and also stressed values. i think he did it remarkably -- it was remarkably effective. >> even if his intent is to get things done. >> at of the there is much he will get done career that is always the case in this cycle. bill clinton, george w. bush andrew jackson -- i will defer to john on that. this is not a cycle where you get much done. >> the point is to reassert the deba

for more, let's bring in david sanger the national security correspondent for "the new york times" andped break the story. fascinating to see how it was that they did -- they had to go through china. can you explain that to in the viewers? >> well, shepard, north korea does not have a whole lot of internet connections to the world. they only have 1,024 registered i. p. addresses internet addresses. where you are in new york there are probably more than a thousand on every block that you walk past. so one thing they did was go in through the chinese connection, about if you take a look carefully at some of the snowden documents, the documents leaked by edward snowden and quickly some that were publish over the weekend by the german magazine, you'll discover there was an operation to get into north korea through south korea has early as november 20. it had been a hard target for the united states for some years. >> does your regarding give us an idea of why if we were in their systems, our government wasn't aware to inform sony of what was going down? >> there's no question we spent a lo

david sanger is still with us. christian and gordon are with us as well.reathtaking to me but you are an expert in this area. were you surprised by what you heard? >> i wasn't. i'm a big fan of the nsa and electronics intelligence. i thought it was terrific we penetrated these networks and know what north korea is up to know the extent of chinese enabling of north korean cybertechnology. i think there are some lessons to be learned here. we have been on the defensive in the cyberrealm. we have been on the offensive as david has also reported against countries like iran but not so much against other cyberadversaries. we focus a lot on defending u.s. government systems and maybe we need to be better at going on the offensive and proactively defending u.s. companies in addition to the government. i think the nsa is doing a pretty good job. >> gordon is it possible that north korea didn't know it was being hacked that this is all a big surprise to them? >> actually i think north korea certainly knew what was going on because the north korean authorities worked

. >> david sanger again, hats off. >> thank you. >> the president will be highlighting his domestic initiatives for the middle class, including community college tuition and family leave and state of the union speech tomorrow night and today the white house revealed who is going to be joining first latddy michelle obama as featured guest in her box. they include students and working mothers and wounded warriors and teachers astronauts like scott kelly, scientists and allen gross, along with his wife judy gross, i was of course released from cuba last month after being held in detention for five years. his release coincided with the president's change in policy to the island nation which promises to free up trade and travel relations to a level not seen in more than half a century. tune in here tomorrow night -- tomorrow for a special edition at noon we'll be live from capitol hill. among our guests senator john mccain and nancy pelosi and patrick leahy just back from cuba and former senior adviser david axelrod. coming up now, shots fired outside the vice president's home in delaware. the vice

david sanger of the new york times called this the most closed, control freak and ministration he has most covered. a new york times editor said it is the administration of unprecedented attacks on the free press >> a number of . was before we knew that the justice department had se surveilled foxnews. before he improperly testified under of americans worked subject to massive data collection, i was tipped off that the government was secretly monitoring me due to my reporting. three different exams confirmed the long-term remote surveillance including keystroke monitoring, password's capture, use of skype to listen to audio, and more. getting to the bottom of it has not been easy. it has been unclear what the fbi has done to investigate. the justice department has refuse to answer direct questions about the case. it had no responsive documents then admitting to 2500 of them, but never providing any of them. in 2013, reporters without borders ungraded american standing with the global free press rankings, rating the obama demonstration as worse than bush's. it matters not that when cau

joining me, mohammed and david sanger. what does this mean for united states? >> many of us were surprised by the regular is nation of president hadi and the president felt that they reached a stalemate with the political factions and the prime minister felt that yemen was on the wrong track. so at this point, like you mentioned in your entry, we don't have a president or prime minister. but with the current constitution the government is a caretaker government so it continues to offer basic services and pay salaries and security situation is calm. there's a vacuum but hopefully sunday when the parliament holds a joint session we're going to have two scenarios the parliament will accept the resignation for the president and we'll have 60 days for presidential elections and the speaker of the parliament will be the defacto demander in chief. scenario two, according to the constitution, the president resignation will be rejected by the parliament and the president will have 90 days to continue leadership of the country or to resign again. if he resigns again, tha

david sanger of the "new york times" called this the most closed control freak administration he's everovered. "new york times" public editor "new york times" public editor said it's the administration of unprecedented secrecy and unprecedented attacks on a free press. months before we knew that the justice department had secretly seized a.p. phone records and surveiled fox news' james rosen before director of national intelligence director james clapper incorrectly testified under oath that americans weren't subject to mass data collection, i was tipped off that the government was likely secretly monitoring me due to my reporting. three forensic exams concerned the intrusive long-term remote surveillance. that included key stroke monitoring, password capture use of skype to listen to audio and more. getting to the bottom of it hasn't been easy. it's unclear what if anything the f.b.i. has done to investigate. the justice department has refused to answer simple, direct written congressional questions about its knowledge of the case. it has stonewalled my freedom of information request,

david sanger of the "new york times" called this the most closed control freak administration he's ever covered. "new york times" public editor said it's the administration of u.n. precedented secrecy and unprecedented attacks on a free press. months before we knew that the justice department had secretly seized a.p. phone records and surveiled fox news' james rosen before director of national intelligence director james clapper incorrectly testified under oath that americans weren't subject to mass data collection, i was tipped off that the government was likely secretly monitoring me due to my reporting. three forensic exams concerned the intrusive long-term remote surveillance. that included key stroke monitoring, password capture, use of skype to listen to audio and more. getting to the bottom of it hasn't been easy. it's unclear what if anything the f.b.i. has done to investigate. the justice department has refused to answer simple, direct written congressional questions about its knowledge of the case. it has stonewalled my freedom of information request, first saying it has no re