0 he or she stole the show, as well as the fish. the cameras were filming the cooking show "chef on the water." >> thanks. that does it for this edition of "ac360." -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com and good evening, everyone. i'm erin burnett. out front tonight. breaking news under pressure. the obama administration has just authorized the release of more details about the american government's collection of telephone data. the director of national intelligence, james clapper just said this in a statement. their declassification is not done lightly. i have determined, however, that the harm to national security from the release of these documents is outweighed by the public interest. now clapper and other officials are all going to be testifying in detail about this program on capitol hill tomorrow. the white house, though, so far has begged ignorance. but what exactly is the president's role? here's what we know. now hear me out here. a u.s. official tells cnn tonight that president obama was briefed on u.s. spying program, including the one that targeted world leaders when he took over the white house from president george w. bush. the official also tells cnn the president would have been told which specific countries were being targeted in those briefings. but then, a senior administration official still insists to cnn that president obama didn't learn until recently. so which of these sources are telling the truth? jim sciutto is out front. >> reporter: administration officials tell cnn the spying of loaders of close allies such as german chancellor angela merkle took place without president obama's direct knowledge. a senior official says it's not reasonable to expect that the president would have been involved in or necessarily briefed on decisions about individual intelligence targets. in an interview at the fusion cable network president obama says his administration is reviewing the way it collects intelligence. >> what we've seen of the last several years is their capacities continue to develop and expand. and that's why we're initiating a review to make sure that what they're able to do doesn't necessarily mean that's what they should be doing. >> but he offered this defense. >> the national security operations generally have one purpose and that is to make sure that the american people are safe. >> reporter: whether listening in on the leaders of close allies saves lives, the white house didn't have an answer. although it reaffirmed it is reassessing such high level surveillance as part of its overall intelligence review. on the hill today, european lawmakers went head to head with congressional leaders on nsa spying. for the head of the discussion told me their discussion was frank. you had a very stern message to deliver. >> i think we had a very robust and strong message. this mass surveillance which has come through the allegations is something that is disturbing to european citizens. they feel very uneasy. they don't know why it's happening, why their strongest ally is doing it. >> reporter: and today they had more to talk about regarding spain when they collected data from 60 million phone calls in 30 days, leading to one more u.s. ambassador's summon to explain. european officials say that the surveillance in spain and france only included the metadata. but it is the spying on heads of state that is causing the greatest outrage. they say this does not mean the nsa was going rogue or operating out of bounds, but part of it is to ensure they are getting effective guidance from policymakers. it seems to me they were not getting that effective guidance because they were going ground what the president knew or appeared to have authorized. >> jim sciutto trying to get at the heart of the problem here. thank you for being with us. let he ask you this question -- when you hear these conflicting reports do you believe the president knew not just about the spying on u.s. allies but the specifics, things like the u.s. was tapping their cell phones? do you believe that he knew and knew since i took office or do you believe the other option which is he just recently found out? >> he could have known. i have no way of being able to say he did or he didn't. but he is the chief executive of the united states. underneath him is the intelligence services. and he can get from them whatever information he wants, whether they, whether they gave him details of this or not, i can't say, but i will tell you this. you know, within the intelligence community, this brouhaha, this public brouhaha that is getting so much in the headlines is just not viewed as that huge deal, because collection of information by countries commonly called spying is ubiquitous. used by everybody. it's done by everybody. >> i want to get to that in a few moments. >> first to follow up on this point about what the president knew and when he knew it -- let's just say he didn't know the specifics. shouldn't he have? i mean, you may be right. everybody's going to monitor whatever they can monitor. but the truth of the matter is, if we're monitoring the cell phone of an ally like germany, right, angela merkle, the president should know, shouldn't he? >> erin, there are thousands of intelligence data developed every day. it's absolutely impossible to know every detail in them. when it comes to this, and you look at it, you say 20/20 hindsight. if there's something critical in that information the president should know about it. if it's collection information there's no possible way he or anybody else could know what facts are collected every day. >> which is interesting and i think it's significant. you're a republican senator sort of defending the idea he might not have known. look, spying on the world leader of another major country is just a policy the president should have been aware of. but let me ask you about this, sir. because some folks on both sides of the aisle are defending what the nsa are doing and they're defending it point blank. and one of them might surprise you. here we go. >> they also rely on a lot of the information we gather to protect themselves. >> it keeps the french safe, the u.s. safe, the european allies safe. >> i recall landing in iran a few years ago and seeing a lot of german business men and they were violating sanctions. just because a country is your ally doesn't mean they're doing everything consistent with your policy, wouldn't that explain the monitoring and mean that the germans and everybody else would monitor american phones if they could too, that all this quote-unquote spying is okay? and the u.s., instead of saying i'm sorry, should defend it? >> there's all kinds of explanations. but we get these other countries come to us all the time and they are very happy that we are doing monitoring of some of their citizens, because we share information with them just as they do share information with us. but, you know, any of us that are in this business, any country thee we go to, whether it's friend, foe or a neutral country, every piece of electronic equipment we take in is swept before we go in and swept when we come out. this is ubiquitous. it is everywhere. it is thousands of pages a day. and so -- you know, for everybody to be wringing their hands -- nobody's asked yet the french or the germans or the spanish to say okay, who are you listening to? what collection are you doing? on who? you'd probably get them stuttering and stammering and say we'll neither admit or deny just like the u.s. agencies do. >> it's kind of amazing your point, which is sometimes you gather, you gather so much. seems like we're gathering so much we don't know what we're gathering. the president doesn't even know, what's the point? jay carney today was, frankly, apologetic. they said they're going to go ahead and make some changes. let me play just as jay described it. >> we recognize that there need to be additional constraints on how we gather and use intelligence. >> so does he have a point? that there should be additional constraints? or is that basically unilaterally disarming as someone told me today, that the u.s., if it backs down now and stops doing this monitoring, it would be very damaging possibly for the security of the u.s. as well as its allies? >> what he said was the diplomatic correct thing to say. the executive branch is in charge of this. they know what they've got to look at in order to keep america safe. this is not a partisan issue. this is a bipartisan issue. we all agree that we've got to do the kind of intelligence gathering that we do in order to keep americans safe. >> so you don't think they're going to back off unnecessarily. they're going to say the right thing, but they're going to do what they need to do. >> the other side would say the same thing under the similar circumstances. >> thank you. we appreciate it. and still, a math teacher found dead in the woods behind her school. police say a 14-year-old student committed the crime. and we learn more about her from her family. plus a massive man hunt is under way. two prisoners are still on the loose. they escaped under the noses of guards. we're going to tell you exactly how they did it. this is the kind of thing you think someone would have to make up in a thriller. and chris brown arrested over the weekend for assault, a major decision and charges tonight. we'll have that coming up.

Related Keywords

New York , United States , Grady County , Oklahoma , North Carolina , Germany , Afghanistan , Iran , China , Nairobi , Nairobi Area , Kenya , California , Syria , Russia , Washington , District Of Columbia , Pakistan , Alexander Field , Iraq , Caddo County , Massachusetts , Hollywood , Sochi , Krasnodarskiy Kray , Saudi Arabia , Capitol Hill , Spain , France , Americans , America , Saudi , Russian , Germans , Saudis , French , Spanish , Soviet , German , Syrian , American , Chris Lawrence , Bob Marley , Kathleen Sebelius , Jay Carney , Jeffrey Zients , Philip Chism , Bny Mellon , George Howell , Jerry Sandusky , Vladimir Putin , Philip Chisholm , Dan Simon , Christopher Brown , Al Qaeda , Sean Penn , George W Bush , Tiananmen Square , Dick Cheney , Tom Forman , Colleen Ritzer , Erin Burnett , Angela Merkle , Chris Brown ,