former ambassador thomas pickering giving a lengthy closed-door deposition before the house oversightommittee on his investigation into last year's terrorist act. republicans argue his review of the fact the nep to benghazi was flawed because pickering and his co-author did not interview high-ranking officials, including then secretary of state hillary clinton. today the ambassador defended his review and committed to an open-hearing on the matter within two weeks. bill clinton first urged his wife to run against an incompetent, incumbent president. then he wanted to negotiate for an endorsement. ed plank and author of the best-selling book, the amateur, on the clinton-obama relationship. a constitutional crisis, the obama administration's secret e-mail account. irs abuses of power, and eric holder is seemingly endless capacity to create controversy and scandal. fox legal analyst. next. depends on me. and my team? is 50,000 strong. ♪ hey! hawkins: this is what it feels like to be part of a team. a winning team. the action team. are you in? get in on the action a actionteam.org. are yo

. >>> and lawmakers are still deciding how they want to interview ambassador thomas pickering and mikelen who wrote the original report on the benghazi terror attacks. >>> stocks ended the day mixed, the dow up 10. nasdaq gained 5. the ratings company standard and poors upgraded the outlook on the u.s. from negative to stable. tentative improvements bought washington more time it says to grapple with long term challenge. >>> no grapevine. we can bring you a special story. this is the place where all of the secrets are kept. we go to utah and see the nsa's dark star. i want to make things more secure. [ whirring ] [ dog barks ] i want to treat mo dogs. ♪ our business needs more cases. [ male announcer ] where do you want to take your business? i need help selling art. [ male announcer ] from broadband to web hosting to mobile apps, small business solutions from at&t have the security you need to get you there. call us. we can show you how at&t solutions can help you do what you do... even better. ♪ you will lose 3 sets of keys 4 cell phones 7 socks and 6 weeks of sleep but one thing you

dana, we also have former ambassador thomas pickering testifying on benghazi behind closed doors.sume, dana, that's because they, again, don't want to hear that the white house did not, in fact, order troops to stand down. >> well, more to the point they don't want the public to hear that. so hence behind closed doors. the democrats have been asking for this to happen for some time, and pickering has said he's very eager to testify. the ben gaughazi thing from beginning to end has been quite an extraordinary affair. last week we had michele bachmann saying, in fact, it was actually the cover-up following the death of these men that actually caused the deaths going back in time to do that. >> yes. >> so, you know, the irs scandal is one where, okay, something bad really did happen there. they could be investigating this. they could be -- >> dana, the president. >> -- seeing where the trail leads. >> the president, himself, condemned what happened in that office in cincinnati. there's never been a dispute. >> exactly. focus on what occurred there. pursue a legitimate line of inquiry

the public deserves to hear your answers and our questions, wrote the ambassador thomas pickering andely, darrell issa declined preferring to hold secret meetings that he can leak at his own convenience. mr. issa himself must know the dangers of selective information. after all, he was connected to two allegations of car theft. he increased his company's fire insurance from $100,000 to $400,000 just three weeks before his warehouse burned down. suspicious circumstances. does that mean that mr. issa has stolen cars and committed insurance fraud? no. but it does problem the power of selective information. thanks for watching. chris matthews is next. >>> you mean there's no scandal? let's play "hardball." >>> good evening. i'm chris matthews up in new york. let me start tonight with this. once there was a whiff of scandal, you know that whiff of can dal over at the irs. now we learn there's not even a whiff. no, just one desperate california congressman whose bluff has been called. and with us tonight, the man who called the bluff, u.s. congressman elijah cummings, ranking democrat on th

and that happens just as former ambassador thomas pickering who led the review at the state departmenthat happened in benghazi and how we got to all these conflicting explanations and, you know, all the errors that took place and, of course the lack of security that left ambassador and three others sitting there like sitting ducks on a terror anniversary, 9/11. in any event, ambassador pickering ran that investigation but he neglected to interview the one key figure in all of that was secretary of state hillary clinton. yesterday he gave a lhy closed door deposition before lawmakers. sat ther more than three hours asking -- or answering questions. and one of those questions was why didn't you talk to the secretaof state when you conducted your so-called comprehensive review? jason chaffitz in that closed door meeting. good to see you. what was the explanation? >> we were in there for about s. i was in there for 90% of it. in the spirit of what we agreed to do in that room, i think the transcript will be made public. i can't get into the direct specifics. i will tell you that i think th

the co-author of that arb report, admiral thomas -- i'm sorry, ambassador thomas pickering, also hasfied. this will complete the cycle at least for the two authors of that report testifying in front of congress. jenna: well, "happening now" on a day where we're continuing to debate the nsa and the big surveillance program, we can't lose sight as to why we even have that program to begin with, and that's 9/11. that's also the reason we went to war in afghanistan, but we certainly don't talk a lot about the war anymore. so we wanted to take a moment to do that today. there's some big announcements out of afghanistan today. security throughout that country is now primarily in the hands of afghan forces with america and nato allies playing a supporting role. again, a big announcement today about that change. reports suggest this clears the way for a full withdrawal of foreign troops in 18 months. also happening today, an official announcement now that talks will happen between the united states and the taliban and between the taliban and the afghanistan government through a new political