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"cnn newsroom" starts right now. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com right now supporters of that budget deal are trying to round up votes. the agreement sailed through the who us but it faces a tougher time in the senate. we'll have the latest vote tally live from capitol hill. right now the debate over amnesty for edward snowden. he said he would come home if he got protection from prosecution. what is he saying about the offer? we're going to tell you. right now finals week back on at harvard after a bomb scare this morning briefly shut down parts of the campus. with nerves still raw from the boston marathon bombings, university officials were taking no chances. we'll have a live update from cambridge just ahead. hello, i'm wolf blitzer in washington. they say every vote counts and supporters of that compromise budget deal are counting every vote in the senate right now. they expect a deal to pass, but the outcome is not necessarily completely guaranteed. the margin could be razor thin. among the republicans who say they'll vote for the bill, senator susan collins, senator ron johnson, senator john mccain, senator mccain spoke about it on cnn's "state of the union." >> i hope it will pass the senate. i'll do anything, not anything but we must not shut down the government again. we can't do that to the people of this country and my state. >> dana bash is tracking the vote tally on capitol hill. give us the latest breakdown. >> you just mentioned the republicans who are going to vote yes, but before we get to that, tomorrow there is going to be a key procedural url measure that is going to determine the fate of this budget deal in the senate. and let's just sort of explain what is going to be needed. so viewers can understand. first of all, it will need 60 votes to pass or break a filibuster. and we'll remind viewers what the breakdown of the parties are in the senate right now, 55 democrats, 45 republicans. now, let's just assume for argument's sake all democrats vote thor this. we don't know that's going to happen. it might not. you would need five republicans. we have them right now who would vote for this procedural measure, john mccain, susan collins of maine, jeff flake of arizona, he's the junior senator from arizona. richard richard burr of north carolina, and ron johnson of wisconsin. now, those are all senators who say, you see them up there, all senators on the republican side who say that they at least want to give this measure, this deal a chance to get to a final vote. and why does this matter? this matters because once it gets to a final vote, you just need a simple majority, 51. democrats are expected to have that. so that's why this key 60-vote threshold tomorrow is the one to batch for. going back to the democrats really fast, there very well could be a few democrats, maybe some of thome up for re-election in tough races, red states like mark pryor of arkansas, or kay hagan of north carolina. we haven't heard from her yet. but it looks as though democrats and republicans frankly behind the scenes are pretty confidence that this is going to go through. >> this is a compromise that sailed through the house of representatives. but with every compromise, you're going to end foo people on both sides unhappy with various aspects of the bill. one of the biggest complaints you're hearing from the left and the right? oh, well, starting on the left, certainly some of the biggest complaints you go to the far left are that in this doesn't have unemployment insurance, the extension for long-term unemployment recipients. that's a big problem. but interestingly, some of the democrats who are most squishy about this are those more conservative and they are concerned this doesn't do enough to address the debt and deficit, which is some of the complaints we heard on the republican side, too. but what is really different on the republican side which is making this a very new dynamic is that many of them are unhappy with the fact that this deal includes an increase in basically an increase in this military benefits. excuse me. let me rephrase that. increase in the cost of living adjustment for military recipients. so basically what that means is that people who are in the military would probably lose some of their retirement money as part of this deal. that is why you have a lot of republicans who are either unsure if they're going to vote for this or outright opposed to tend to vote for« compromises like lindsey graham of south carolina and others. who are saying they're not going to vote for this because they feel militaryport retirees get a raw deal. >> it's not only military retirees but civilian government employees would get a little bit less pension, as well. over 20, 30 years that number could add up. there are complaints coming in on that front. dana, we're going to have a lot more on this later. thanks very much. we're also learning more about edward snowden and the documents he took from the nsa. in an interview with "60 minutes," the man leading the snowden task force revealed the number, get this, 1.7 million documents, and he talked about the potential danger in leaking those documents to countries like china and russia. >> it would give them a road map what we know, what we don't know and give them implicitly a way to protect their information from the u.s. intelligence community's view. >> for an adversary in the intelligence game, that's a gold mine. >> it is the keys to the kingdom. >> let's bring in our pentagon correspondent barbara starr. one other part of the discussion was potentially granting him amnesty if he returns with all those documents. rick legedtee says that should be at least considered. here's what keith alexander says. >> this is analogous to a hostage taker taking 50 people hostage, shooting ten and then say if you give me full amnesty, i'll let the other 40 go. what do you do? >> it's a dilemma. >> it is. >> do you have a pick? >> i do. i think people have to be held accountable for their actions because what we don't want is the next person to do the same thing, race off to hong kong and to moscow with another set of data knowing they can strike the same deal. >> all right. so what's the reaction this morning, barbara? >> well, you know, so far, there doesn't seem to be a lot of official support for any dale of amnesty or pardon for snowden. in fact, the national security council spokes minnesota put out a statement saying "there's been no change in u.s. policy on this be issue. mr. snowden is charged with a felony, and he should return home to face those charges where he will be afforded all due process." but wolf, behind the scenes, what's so interesting here is that even the notion of amnesty or pardon has been raised. albeit mr. leggett said the it was his personal opinion. he is a top nsa official. what this goes to is the growing dred in the u.s. intelligence community that edward snowden indeed has more to disclose and that he has been holding on to a real -- they're calling it the crown jewels beyond the crown jewels. the real treasure trove of information that he might release in the coming weeks and months. they are really at a crossroads. they don't know how to deal with this, what to do about it. as long as he remains in moscow, they can't get their hands on him. so very quietly, it looks like this notion of amnesty being raised, it would be extraordinarily will controversial if it happened. >> it certainly would be. but in if in fact he has almost 2 million documents and only on released a few thousand so far, that is a huge issue for the u.s. national security community. we also learned, as you know, barbara, that the nsa went to great lengths to ensure snowden didn't leave behind a virus when he fled the united states. listen to this. >> all the machines that he had access to, we've removed from our classified network. all the machines in the unclassified network including the actual cables that connect those machines we removed, as well. >> this has to have cost million nz abmillions of dollars. >> tens of millions. >> president promised there would be changes ins the way the united states gathers intelligence. we're going to be hearing some of those details fairly soon, right? >> absolutely. a report from a commission went to the white house on friday. they are looking at it now. they're not ready to talk about it, they say but expect to see some of that in the coming days and weeks, perhaps as soon as right after the new year, what the administration will do now to try and reform intelligence collection, address these issues of potential abuse of their surveillance powers. this is the next step even while they still try and go after edward snowden and prosecute him. >> thanks very much. later this hour, by the way, i'll speak with cnn's national security consider the analyst fran townsend about these reports. 1.million documents stolen by edward snow eden from the nsa and only supposedly a few thousand released so far. meanwhile, a bomb threat at harvard university this morning appears too have been a hoax. no explosives were found. but several campusables were evacuated as a precaution. final exams scheduled for this morning in those buildings were canceled. the greater boston area still jittery after last april's terrorist bombing at the boston marathon. that attack killed three and wounded hundreds. let's bring in alexandra field on the scene for us. may have been a hoax, alexandra, but it still was a serious are crime whoever committed this hoax. so where does this investigation go from here? >> reporter: and actually, wolf, the investigation is still.haing on this campus right now. we've got state, local and federal officials here. minutes ago they told us they had officially cleared two of the four buildings that were targeted as part of the threat. there are still investigators in two of the other buildings. we know that this investigation will move forward both on campus and online. a source tells cnn's deb feyerick the initial threat was e-mailed this morning to harvard university police. we don't know what kind of e-mail account was used or whether an ip address is available at this point. certainly the digital trail is one that investigators will be looking closely at and it's worth noting here, wolf, this is a serious crime. a threat against a campus. it could come with a whole host of charges depending on the specific circumstances of this case. it could include anything from filing a false police report to reckless endangerment. it could bring federal charges here if the internet was used. >> alexandra, thank you. so will this weekend's storm play scrooge for millions of americans? 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