one of the things said is that it should have been a nonpolitical look. the caa pushed back on this since 2005. finally it's coming on out. and nonpolitical - who is going to do it. this is what congress does. they scrutinise the activity. there's no other body that could have done this. the c.i.a. couldn't do it. internal conflicts. always going to be political. congress has the responsibility. mr haden has another take on this. he was the director of the c.i.a. during a period of time when torture was being used. there's a personal conflict there being involved. >> the last question on the political nation on the report that haden commented on. do you think it would have come out once the republicans took over the senate. it's now or never. there are still a number of republican leaders that would have wanted to release it, i don't think they would have had the votes needed to get a release. it had to happen, else the american republic, the world wouldn't have seen what happened. thank you for your time. thank you >>> let's move on to other news, and a

. >> nonpolitical. everyone has their own little political agenda, but not basically political. and the police department led by bill bratton in new york city, is phenomenally well versed and well trained. bill bratton left new york city to go out to l.a. and dealt with the different problems and the racial relations in l.a., so no better suited commissioner is now in place in new york city. >> how much is there up though? when you talk about bringing people to the table to work through this. the whole nation is watching new york city. i realize there are problems in other communities. we talked about berkeley, missouri, ferguson, where this thing started. you have this playing out in other places but all eyes in new york with new year's eve coming up, a gigantic event for police to protect us. >> without demonstrators. now that demonstrators -- >> interesting. >> looking to come into times square to possibly disrupt that, another, you know, obstacle for police to consider. police in new york city over

what we really could have used is a really nonpolitical look at the cia program, the one that was launched when this report first got under way. this report was supposed to have conducted interviews, hearings and give recommendations. it doesn't have any of those. i was in government for ten years after 9/11, and let me tell you a phrase i never heard from anybody in any position of authority. whatever you guys do about this terrorism threat, please, please, don't overreact. never heard it, brian. >> part of our interview today with retired general michael hayden, former head of the nsa and cia. >>> as we switch our attention to the other stories we're covering tonight, that includes two major storm systems affecting millions of americans at both ends of this country. to the east, torrential rain bringing heavy flooding and some areas already hard hit are about to get a lot more. snow to the west. a storm with potentially hurricane-force winds bearing down. nbc's ron mott is in gloucester, mass, for us tonight. ron, good evening. >> reporter: brian, good evening to you. the snow coming wit

the irs isn't supposed to be a partisan organization, it's supposed to be nonpolitical. and to add the political element for it, that's not what americans want. david: it's against the law, after nixon used the irs for political purposes, congress changed the law, it was one of the articles of impeachment against richard nixon. he was never impeached. they would have used that as a charge to impeach him. >> this report makes nixon look like a change. think of the terms, culture of byes aweaponization of the irs? this is a damning report, and the media is delinquent for not using this as a tool in reporting. if you think about it, the white house, they lay out a timeline. here's when the president talked about conservative groups. here's where irs officials talked about fixing the problem with conservative groups. lay out a timeline. david: and of course the time line, tracy, right before the president's re-election. it's clear they wanted to clear the dex of the conservative groups before the president's re-election and, of course that's exactly what happened. i'm wonder

do you trust the kind of nonpolitical nature, the nonpartisan nature of this institution. which is meant to preserve policy. >> their motivation is to get rid of that nonpartisan aspect. so that i don't have any doubts about what their motivation is. doug is an honest guy. i don't know him real well, i know him a little bit. he's making mistakes. the people they get in you know, if they're looking to get rid of doug, it's not because they've made the criticisms that i just made. that's not a good story. >> we went through one round of sort of number cooking. it sort of lost the history a little bit. but it was a big policy debate of the earlier yearings of the bush administration. and the numbers were blatantly cooked. if you brought that inside the cbo, that would be a real problem. >> it's a mixed story. i would have to hope that you and others in the media are saying look, you guys are hacks. we have any number of peter peterson front organize gags eization saying we have to cut social security, get rid of medicare whatever it might be. i'm not sure that that would be q

that he is obviously -- obviously this is criminal but i'm talking more from the perspective of nonpoliticallyivated attack. what makes it unique in this case, he's a person who has been politically active. he's outspoken, he's critical. there's videos of him giving sermons and known to be harassing the spouses of soldiers who have fight and died in afghanistan. in is not an individual who is completely void of any political context. he's politically connected to what is happening on the ground but at the same time we have to wait to see where the dust settles on this particular incident and whether there is just an outburst. >> how can we factor that as far as australia supporting the united states in the fight against isis? >> we can go back to 1998. 1998 a police station in sydney had a drive by shooting and two australian-lebanese muslims were arrested for that. in 2005, there were jihadist cells uncovered -- the biggest we saw in september which arrested nine men that was in sydney. there's also riots. there's been sectarian violence going on in australia since 2000 through the forms of g

it seems like an incredibly random nonpolitical place to choose. a chocolate cafe in the city. but when you really think about it in context and what we know now it's not that random. it's right in the heart of sidney's central business district. it's surrounded by federal buildings, law offices and as we've now said directly across the road from our television studios which had a very clear view through the windows straight into that cafe. now in the beginning we saw those horrific heartwrenching images of the hostages with hands against the windows and holding up the black and white flag. it appeared early on as well perhaps the man inside was watching because he was making those hostages keep moving the flag perhaps to get a better vantage point in front of our cameras which is just horrific. you guys at cnn did the same thing we cut that live feed. we were talking with police. it's extremely dangerous to broadcast these live events as they are unfolding. we always have the safety of those poor people inside in our best interests. you just can't reveal the tactical operation

and we absolutely need them to be nonpartisan, nonpolitical, nonagenda beyond the good government. it's an agency that hasn't been managed very well. i'd say that's an understatement. it's very poorly managed. they need to improve. the other -- you know, in terms of the substance, this is an agency that has more than $80 billion in improper payments. that means checks go to people who don't deserve them. they need to really get at some of these technological issues and reform them. so it's really unfortunate that the i.r.s. sort of saw its role going this way. what's more unfortunate is management at the i.r.s. seemed to be unaware. now, she was in pretty high-level management but we don't have an indication that the commissioner of the i.r.s. was directly involved in this. but, again, we don't have all the information. i wouldn't have thought it would have taken us a year and a half to get it, but we will eventually get as much as we can. then we'll make a determination from there. i did make a referral to the justice department, that the committee voted to refer the information t

. >> we also to want get your views on nonpolitics but some important changes over in the administration potentially with andrea mitchell reporting that one of the names we keep hearing about, ashton carter, as potential replacement to chuck hagel. your thoughts on that idea. >> ashton carter is the ultimate inside, brilliant defense player and analyst. he's as much inside the pentagon as chuck hagel really was, ironically, even though he had been a soldier in world war ii, outside the pentagon. ashton carter is a rhodes scholar, a physicist. his expertise was missile defense and so forth, but he's long ago learned the inside game at the pentagon it's worthy to be nominated. this could cement the control of white house insiders like the chief of staff and susan rice and others, they would be fully in control of the pentagon in a way that they didn't think chuck hagel had the chops to carry out. >> did he used to be married to demi moore? >> no, sorry. >> different guy. >> entirely different guy. >> and when you -- when you google him, you still get ashton kaert, but you get ashton kutche

>> i wreck on media played kind of a rather nonpolitical role in creating my image.and what comes from my heart rather than what other people say about me. that's one of the other reasons why i'm here now to sing. ♪ ♪ welllllllll, not when your travel rewards card makes it so hard to get a seat using your miles. that's their game. the flights you want are blacked out. or they ask for some ridiculous number of miles. honestly, it's time to switch to the venture card from capital one. with venture, use your miles on any airline, any flight, any time. no blackout dates. and with every purchase, you'll earn unlimited double miles. from now on, no one's taking your seat away. what's in your wallet? from now on, no one's taking your seat away. walgreens knows the holidays are full of surprises. that's why, whenever the need arises... walgreens is always right around the corner, so you can get in and out in no time. and help keep the magic in your holidays. at the corner of happy and healthy. plus get up to $20 in jingle cash on next week's purchase of $30 or more. >> osgoo

striking how often the british are referred to as being clinical while the americans of course are nonpolitical and simply wanted to get the fighting over and done with and go home. led to think about and re-examine this standard narrative, which i would suggest is the one most of us are familiar with. i began to re-examine this narrative not from studying world war ii, but i thinking about events in the early cold war. in particular, the events of 1937 with the proclamation of the truman doctrine. very rapidly following that, the american intervention into the civil war in greece, the intervention into turkey, and shortly thereafter, the broadening of american presence andhe eastern mediterranean the support for the foundation of the state of israel will stop it struck me thinking about this of deepening american involvement in the eastern mediterranean that this would have been very difficult to and maybe even impossible to accomplish without the preexistence of substantial american engagement in the western mediterranean. you already needed a basis of power in the region to be able to effect

because i came from a family that was nonpolitical. my parents were registered republicans. there's no genetic reason why i do this, but i got to see people like tom fight on behalf of the disabled and the disenfranchised and the dispossessed and gave me an idea there was some worth being in a business which if you grew up after vietnam you were just taught was crooked or not worth being a part of and and then there were a handful of people like tom harkin who told you it was worth being a part of. so the legacy that senator harkin will have whether it's the farm bill, the americans with disabilities act, the investment act, that's all you need to leave this place fulfilled, but to think there are tens of thousands of people like me who are doing this kind of work, who are trying to keep up the legacy that you are going to leave, that's something to be really proud of as well. i feel lucky that i get to be a member of this body in part because i got to meet tom harkin 20 years ago because i got to follow his lead because i got to be inspired by him. i yield the floor. the pr

and these, these great nonpolitical challenges, including epidemics, global warming, climate change are, in fact, national security problems for us. and i think we have to find a way to address them. but we're dealing with such a disfunctional political system, and these slow bleeds don't serve to unite, they serve to polarize. in part because however imminent and self-evident climate change may be, unless you can produce something that is inescapable, something that a politician has to deal with now, something that is felt among broader aspects of the public -- and, remember, governing is about choosing. fdr once said about lincoln that he died a sad man because he couldn't have everything. and fdr was talking about the greatest president we've ever had. focusing on where you want to spend your political capital in a country that is now only, grudgingly in some respects and incrementally recovering from the worst economic recession since the great depression which is not felt becomes a huge priority. and i suspect it will, depending on the sate of the recovery, for the -- on the state

. >> well jose i heard at commencement address they were careful to bill this as a nonpolitical trip.didn't do other political meetings while he was here. he did meet with south carolina governor nikki haley before the commencement. his team was very careful to emphasize that she has an official role with the university of south carolina. as you pointed out, just being here in this early primary state is what really matters here. this place historically, it's been a state very good to the bushes. particularly george w. bush. ch it's where he nailed down the nomination. it's a place jeb bush would have to do well in he wanted to succeed in winning the presidential nomination in 2016. and i think the question is how much the state has changed since then. has it become more conservative? you know operatives here used to brag that this is the place that picked presidents that since 1980 they voted for the presidential nominee every time. and that changed last time around when they picked newt gingrich and he went onto lose. >> and mark you wrote last week, five signs jeb bush is readying