daily beast columnist kearse ton powers. fox news contributor richard grinnell. "fox news watch" is on right now. >> we can and must be more transparent. so i directed the intelligence community to make public as much information about these programs as possible. all these steps are designed to ensure that the american people can trust their efforts are in line with our interests and our values. to others around the world i want to make clear once again that america is not interested in spying on ordinary people. intelligence is focused, above all, on finding the information that's necessary to protect our people and in many cases protect our allies. >> that was the president earlier this month trying to convince americans his administration is doing all it can to be transparent in regard to the nsa collection of data. this week, a 2011 declassified report was released. it shows that the agency scooped up as many as 56,000 e-mails and other communications from americans with no connection to terrorism. the report also included the opinions from the then chief jud

nbc's kristen well kearse at the white house and nbc news foreign news correspondent richard engel is in cairo. what's the latest there. >> reporter: i'm still struck by that map you showed. so much yellow. this is an unbelievable crackdown that is taking place, the embassy here and in so many countries closed down, consulates, as well, about 22 of them. here in cairo today, nothing special, the embassy just had security personnel. we have learned a little bit more talking to sources about this specific terror threat. it does go back to yemen. it goes back to al qaeda in the arabian peninsula, which is the al qaeda group based in yemen and in saudi arabia. and we were told that the threat is specifically both in timing, the timing around now and in location focused on yemen. but because of developments recently within al qaeda in the arabian peninsula the threat was expanded to other embassies, other consulates and this global travel alert. what has happened is midlast month, the deputy commander of al qaeda in the arabian peninsula was killed in a drone attack so that group, which is