gop blocked a vote on a measure that would have required by law campaigns to inform the fbi of offers of foreign help. of course as you know the president has said publicly he might accept foreign help. i wonder, you've covered russia for some time, does russia look at that as an invitation to interfere in this next election? to offer help to candidates that it wants to help? >> well, they have to. if you look at this from an intelligence perspective this is what we call classically covert action. that's what the head of russia said in helsinki and the implications for them are the president of the united states says this isn't really a big deal at least initially saying this didn't happen. so if you're in russia and an intelligence officer you're saying what's the cost and the benefit is huge. >> are you concerned the president would welcome such help? >> you know, that's a fascinating question. i initially thought until a couple of weeks ago that the issue here like everybody else thought, the issue here was the president was embarrassed.