tom brokaw nbc news and it's my sad duty to report this afternoon that my friend and colleague, tim russert, the moderator of "meet the press" and nbc's washington bureau chief collapsed and died early this afternoon while at work at the nbc news bureau in washington. >> the shockwaves cannot be fully expressed. tim was our friend, our leader, our cheerleader, our teacher, my mentor. >> and, of course, the country has just mourn the passing of the plain spoken man who practically invented the role of anchorman just as television news was coming of age. >> good evening from our cbs newsroom in new york on this the first broadcast of network television's first daily half hour news program. >> at a funeral service this week one of cronkite's oldest friend grew quite emotional. >> he's been such a good friend over the years. please excuse me. thank you. >> these were all journalistic giants but are they irreplaceable? there's no shortage of talented anchors and correspondents today but they operate in an environment far different from cronkite. one where cable news and blogs and websites and tw

then when the investigators come along a couple months later, he says, i heard it from tim russert. which is his line, and why he was convicted, he said he completely forgot that dick cheney ever talked to him about this and then when he heard it from tim russert, it was like he was learning it for the first time. a jury listened to him say that. they said that's baloney. that's why he was convicted. >> let's talk about where this ends right now. the president said no to him. >> three times. >> the president said no. do you have a sense from your reporting that the president believed that scooter libby and the vice president were in cahoots on trying to out valerie wilson as a cia agent as part of the effort to cover up basically the whole question of why we went to war with iraq? >> there's some evidence in the grand jury testimony as it came out in the trial that perhaps the vice president and libby actually asked bush to come to scooter's defense at the time in 2003. it's not clear, and i don't know, we don't know whether bush was aware that that was incorrect, whether he found o

> reporter: the program began in the aftermath of 9/11, around that same time cheney told nbc's tim russert that secrecy and counter terror operations was essential. >> a lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, withoutny discussion, using sources and thet thods that are available to our intelligence agencies if we're going to be successful. >> reporter: today even some republicans say failing to inform congress was a mistake. >> the cia should brief the congress. congress should exercise responsible oversight. >> reporter: but they also accuse democrats of playing politics. >> they misld us all the time. >> reporter: house speaker nancy pelosi has been under republican attack since may when she accused the cia of repeatedly lying to congress. >> it looks to me suspiciously like an attempt to provide political cover to her and others. >> reporter: republicans caution that attacking the cia runs the risk of ruining moral. >> they use the cia as whipping boys. they become a symbol of the errors of a prior administration. >> reporter: democrats aren't swayed, and in the

he stayed in the senate but his staff prepared a detailed blueprint of how to run in 1984 hiring tim russert as press secretary and trying to get george wallace in horsemen but kennedy also had to look at. >> let the interrupt you but going back to 1980, that's was his real run. and nothing seemed to work for him. talk about that estimate he was unprepared and it was clear from the beginning from the 336 rambling answer, i think he never wanted to run. i think his close advisers who had known him for years he knew he had to run at some point* he was getting the noise and then head for years and years when will you do? it was a part of the game when he would do with it, not if the definitely had to run. i think as much as anything else he ran is simply to get the noise out of his head. she was tired of that and he was unprepared as you saw from the very beginning from the speech but most unlike him he ran a very disorganized and messy campaign. he did not have any of the stuff together he had the fund raised properly he did not do any of the stuff that a kennedy does to run. that went on and