us, author and historian, doris kearns goodwin, and "time" magazine senior political analyst, mark halperin. >> from nbc news in washington, "meet the press" with david gregory. >> good morning. july is now the deadliest month for u.s. troops in the nine-year war in afghanistan. with us, the president's principle military adviser, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, admiral mike mullen. welcome back to "meet the press." >> good morning, david. >> we just played for our viewers strong comments by you about these leaks. you indicated those who are responsible for making these secret documents public may already have blood on their hands. a strong statement. what specifically do you mean? >> the scope and volume of these leaks are unprecedented and the specifics of them and i've been through some of them but we've still got a lot of work to do to really put the details together. i think the leaks themselves don't look clearly at the war that we're in, there is an ability to put this kind of information together in the world that we're living in and potential for costing us lives is sign

i do not know john heileman, but i do know mark halperin. i'm very disappointed they made no effort to contact me. i could have told him. >> larry: they never tried to call you? >> no. it's not that hard to reach me. >> larry: no. >> and they made no effort. it would have been nice if they had. not because -- some of the things are not true that i understand are in there. but some of the things -- >> larry: well, they make you almost like a devil. >> yeah. and, um, they're just, you know -- were there times on the road when it was tense with john? yes. did i ever say john doesn't -- you know, i read books, john doesn't, for example? john reads ten times the number of books i do. i mean, i would never have said that. if i ever called him a hick, it was because he liked to be called a hick, you know? oh, you're such a hick, you know, you're such a country boy. i don't know -- "hick's" not really a word i'd use. >> larry: does it bother you -- or when you have stage 4 cancer, does nothing bother you? >> no, it bothered me. i wrote this in the l

mark halperin, on the point about the economy specifically the auto bailouts because the white houseccess here. we bailed them out. it was unpopular. look, they've come back. we saved jobs. if we walked away it would have been worse. i was reading a blog on washingt washingtonpost.com. the president was in michigan on friday and tried to turn that around. i want to show a portion of what he said. >> the bottom line is this. we have a long way to go, but we're beginning to see some of these tough decisions pay off. we are moving forward. i want you to remember though if some folks had their way, none of this would have been happening. just want to point that out. right. i mean this plant and your jobs might not exist. there were leaders of the just say no crowd in washington. they were saying standing by the auto industry would guarantee failure. one of them called it the worst investment you could possibly make. >> mark, what strikes me is the president is still trying to win the argument on some of these big issues. >> there's a two-part argument. you saw part of it there. it's hard

and for more, we're joined by mark halperin. good morning. let's first talk about yesterday's announcement that the israelis and palestinians will engage in peace talks september 2nd in washington. we hear hillary clinton saying helps for a comprehensive peace agreement in one year's time. a pretty tall order. what impact will the success or failure have on the obama administration then? >> we've waited a long time, a year in, the scheme of middle east conflict isn't a long period of time. you know the old joke about chicken soup, it couldn't hurt. this is a good step, but it doesn't mean there's a settlement. there's still a lot of problems. scheduling the talks is progress, but all the underlying problems, all of that needs to be worked out. getting the talks started, though, is good for the president. it's a bit of a risk, but -- >> given that year's time, given it a specific time frame to make this all happen, is that politically risky? >> they tried to say it wasn't a specific deadline. i think you have to set some sort of time frame. bu