they ever will is pulitzer prize winning national security correspondent for the "new york times" mark mazzetti. mark, thanks so much for being here. (cheers and applause) good to see you. okay, you are the author of "the c.i.a. secret army and war at the ends of the earth called the way of the knife." so let's talk about this. are we doing this? >> yeah, it seems that certainly the u.s. is doing pretty much most of what has been reported over the last several months, including as had been reported in the last couple days, the spying on dozens of world leaders that -- and it could be more. >> is that normal? have we been doing this for a long time or is this the sort of thing that obama started? >> i don't think obama started it. i think it was going on before obama. it was clearly going on during president bush. >> stephen: okay, because he says he didn't know it was happening. do we believe that? >> well, it's -- it's hard to imagine the president didn't know all of these leaders' communications had been tapped. >> stephen: the ultimate question is, is obama blameless or clueless? (laughter)

our purpose is always to detain, interrogate, prosecutor. >> mark mazzetti, author of "a cia, the wararth." thanks for joining us. your thought about these two raids in the last week and what that means measurably in terms of u.s. counter-terrorism strategy. >> partly i think although they happen on the same day they have to be looked at separately. somalia is this case where the u.s. is still going to be loathe to do a lot of boots on the ground operation just because of the risk involved. since 9/11 they have really avoided having american ground troops in somalia because of the history there with the united states and somalia but also because the intelligence is so bad. so i wouldn't expect to see dozens of these or a whole lot of u.s. counter-terrorism operations in somalia. in the libya cases, it's quite interesting because there is a government the u.s. deals with. it does signal that, you know, after the arab spring, with all of these authoritarian governments being toppled in north africa, the u.s. has sort of become more concerned about the terrorism problem in places like li

"new york times" mark mazzetti, thank you for your time and thank you as always to richard engel. plans to celebrate by marrying same sex couple on monday while the mayor uses slurs to denigrate lgtb community. we'll discuss the tale of two parties. my turn daddy, my turn! hold it steady now. i know daddy. [ dad ] oh boy, fasten your seatbelts everybody. [ mixer whirring ] bounty select-a-size. it's the smaller powerful sheet, that acts like a big sheet. look! one select-a-size sheet of bounty is 50% more absorbent than a full size sheet of the leading ordinary brand. [ humming ] [ dad ] use less with the small but powerful picker upper. bounty select-a-size. and try bounty napkins. who gets the allstate safe driving bonus check. rock beats scissors! [ chuckles ] wife beats rock. and with two checks a year, everyone wins. [ female announcer ] switch today and get two safe driving bonus checks a year for driving safely. only from allstate. call 866-906-8500 now. [ dennis ] zach really loves his new camera. problem is...this isn't zach. it's a friend of a friend who was at zach's pa

joining me now mark mazzetti national security correspondent for "new york times" and chris cillizza contributor and host of "in play." i was talking to congressman schiff on the committee and he said there's going to have to be a narrowing of the nsa's reach of broad metadata as it were. he does not see justification for spying on friendly allies. that is really the flash point that has got europeans and now senator feinstein on the senate side and senator collins on the senate side who say they were not briefed in the senate intelligence community. >> interesting you have a lot more congressional outrage over the listening to foreign leaders than the collection of metadata of american citizens. but there is sort of two controversies at the same time, the foreign and domestic. that's what various communities hearing from intelligence officials about. you're correct, the white house really has had to face a cre amount of controversy in the last semple days and political fallout from the leafulations about spying on foreign leaders. >> mark, is it credible the president did not know?