0 cycle." martin, we'll pass it over to you. >> thank you very much, indeed, whoever you are. >> i love you. >> good afternoon. it's thursday june the 6th. washington, there's a call on line one, but i guess you already knew that, didn't you? >> i will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need. >> stunning report. >> i'm a verizon customer. >> not one more thing. >> i don't mind verizon turning over records. >> big brother is spying on all of us. >> this will trigger a leak investigation. >> you have ben rosen. >> exploiting a part of the highly controversial patriot act. >> everyone should just calm down. this isn't anything that is brand new. >> president bush started it. president obama's continuing it. >> this man ran as the anti-bush. >> fisa court works. separation of powers works. our constitution works. >> what the obama administration has done is massively more expansive than what bush did. >> illegal evesdropping program. >> between the failure of general holder and his team. >> things have gotten a little out of whack. >> why would anyone trust the government? >> there are no shortcuts to protecting america. we begin with the government's expanded spying powers under renewed scrutiny today. amid reports that the national security agency is collecting the phone records of millions of americans. a british newspaper, "the guard yan" was first to report on a classified court order it obtained giving the government access to verizon phone records. the president headed to north carolina for an education push, his deputy press secretary said on air force one the phone record data is a critical tool to fight security threats. the white house reiterated that the data collection does not involve listening to anyone's phone calls, and emphasized that all three branches of government have signed off on the program. and this afternoon, the house intelligence committee chairman said that the collection of records has actually stopped a terror attack in this country. >> that within the last few years, this program was used to stop a program, excuse me, stop a terrorist attack in the united states. we know that. it's important. it fills in a little seam that we have. >> congressman rogers there making reference to the fact that this program is not new. a point his senate counterpart, intelligence chairwoman dianne feinstein reinforced. speaking with andrea mitchell this afternoon, she said this was a routine reauthorization of a confidential terror fighting tool. >> this was a routine three. month approval under seal that was leaked. >> should it be, should the leak be investigated? >> i think so. i mean, i think we have become a culture of leaks now. >> and, of course, some of the president's critics were at the ready. speaker john boehner doing his part. >> there are public policy and civil liberties concerns amongst americans today. i trust that the president will explain to the american people why the administration considers this a critical tool in protecting our nation from the threats of the terrorist attack. >> libertarian fire brand senator rand paul called the program an astounding assault on the constitution, while former vice president al gore called it obscenely outrageous. and as if to illustrate the strange alliances that this particular case has helped to forge, a capitol hill hearing this afternoon found senator lindsey graham agreeing with the administration while he was supposed to be berating attorney general eric holder. make a referral or basically a recommendation to the justice department that they look at it. that's step one. hasn't happened yet. step two, the justice department gets that referral and decides whether to conduct an investigation on that. and then would decide whether or not to open a leak case. i think there's some people in go government who think it would be surprising if they didn't given the highly classified nature of this document that "the guardian" got its hands on. no means a certainty, just seems very likely. >> nbc's pete williams. thank you so much, pete. let's go to our panel. msnbc joy reid of the gris and david corn of "mother jones." david, we finally have a scandal. not benghazi, it's not the irs, but it does solinvolve all thre branches of the government. >> it's funny watching john boehner saying, i expect the president to explain this really pretty soon. >> he authorized it. >> when the white house all day protocols would let that scenario that you discussed proceed, but how they use it in fighting terrorism and doing all this stuff still is a big secret to us. >> one of the things i don't understand, finally, joy, is how can the goal of preventing terrorism be served by collecting everybody's cell phone records? >> yeah, it's a terribly inefficient way to do law enforcement because eventually what you're saying is we're going to give, have so much data it would take years to comb through it to get anything that's relevant or useful. it's not necessarily -- >> what they're doing here, and i talked to someone who's kind of involved in this, and he can't get into details, but they're creating basically a database to use against. >> right. to compare it. >> so if they get a phone number, as pete just used an example in england, they can then look at all the records here and find every call that they made and who they made and who they made. you can imagine the diagram chart. and that's where the investigative tool is. it's not to sort of try to sort out and pick out of these yes! one phillips' colon health probiotic cap each day helps defend against these digestive issues... with three strains of good bacteria. 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