and working. the hope is that will finally put an end to this 84-day-old crisis. we're joined by national incident commander admiral thad allen. thanks so much for being with us this morning. >> good morning, kiran. >> the idea is to get an all-encompassing seal, a tighter seal on this leak and then draw up as we were hearing from bp officials, perhaps all of the oil. explain this operation and how it is going so far. >> well, we're going to be in a position later on today to put a containment cap over the well. this containment cap will have the ability to actually close down valves and slowly contain all the oil. once we do that we'll know how much pressure is actually in the well. that could lead to one of two positive outcomes. it could tell us the well is withholding the pressure and we can actually shut the well in or just cap it, if you will. if there is a need that we could produce oil and have enough platforms up on the surface