he lied to every one of his viewers, lied to howard kurtz when he got up there on "reliable sources" last week and said i'm not going to do this again, i have grown up, i'm all better now, i'm going to be responsible. i want to know, what is cnn going to do about it? so for they haven't said anything. >> eric burns, good to have you with us tonight. thanks so much. >>> for more on this let's bring in congressman jim moran of virginia who introduced resolution to protect federal employees. congressman, obviously there are reports of some pretty wild stuff going on around this country as the congressional members are on recess right now. we have a threat on a united states senator. reel this in for a moment. how serious it this in your opinion? >> i think it is serious, ed. the problem is not that there are crazies out there. we know that, but it's being fanned and legitimized, really, by people in the media. it kind of started with ronald reagan back 30 years ago when his theme was that government is not the solution to your problems, government is the problem. and then, of course, hi

. >> before you answer that, howard kurtz wrote yesterday and those perhaps president obama's character is an use a consistent but the portrait may also reflect the fact that aidsn winning campaign had little dirt to dish and even less incentive since many of them are now running the country. just want to add that to her comment spend there's a lot there. let me try to address at least part of the. as john said earlier in him as any is we're doing to many interviews and long interviews we did for the book we were dealing not with strange. we were dealing with people who had very positive strong working relationship over decades. and so in the process we explain to them in great detail what we're doing. we explain the kind of book it was, the terms of which we were speaking. and, you know, history is important. one of the things we learned, much times to our panic, was that time passes people's memory gets worse. there's an oral history here that if we hadn't stepped in and done these entities when we did them, i think a lot of it would have been loss. people have said kurtz's piece and

host: let me get to some criticism of the book from howard kurtz's column. referring to the quotation that came out about what harry reid said in private about barack obama toç john holliman, why don't you take that? -- john heilemann, why don't you take that? guest: in our author's note,ç we mentioned that we conducted the interview on deep background, basically what howie writes in the peace. it is not complete, the description of all the conversations we had with our sources to talk any great detail about how the interview we did conduct would be used in -- we talked in great detail about how the interview that he would conduct would be used in the book. i can say that there is no case in which the way that we explained we are going to that in the and we did not live up to that agreement with any source we talked to in the book. it is important that people understand that a deep background, as many people have written, is not a concept that is etched in stone. every journalist has rules of the road. host: you don't think that concrete come on-the-record

from howard kurtz's column yesterday. >> he's referring to the quote that came out at first about what harry reid said in private about barack obama. john heilemann, why don't you take that. >> well, i would say -- first of all in our authors note we refer to the notion that we conducted our interview on deep background and then we say in a shorthand way what that meant. as basically what howie writes in the piece. the authors note is not, however, complete in the sense it does not have a thorough description of all the conversations we had with our sources which we had with every single source at that we talked to. we would talk in great detail about how the interview we were about to conduct would be used in the book. and we would go through -- there was like a speech -- almost like a sad speech. there was no actual script but there might as well be saying this is how the interview is going to go. this is what we can use and can't use and this is how it's going to work. i can say there's no case in which the -- the way that we explain what we're going to do in the end that we didn't

. >> host: before you answer, howard kurtz wrote in the column yesterday in "the washington post" thatperhaps president obama's character is unusually consistent. but the portrait maylso reflect that the aids on the winning campaign had little dirt tradition and even less incentive since many of them are now running the country. just want to add that to her comments. >> guest: there's a lot, let me try to address part of it. as john said earlier and almost every case as we were doing the many and long interviews for the book we were dealing with what strangers but people who have a positive strong working relationships over decades and so in that process we explain in great detail what we were doing and explain the kind of book it was and explain the terms which we were speaking and history is important. one of the things we learned in much times to our panic was as time passes people's memory gets worse. campaigns don't write about down. so there is an oral history that if we hadn't stepped in and on the interviews when the we did i think a lot of it would have been lost. people have