ambassador mark ginsberg who knew ambassador stevens we know the intelligence community is very small, so we re sorry for your life. thank you. the fact of the matter is the foreign service and all of us who have served in the past in the diplomatic service and who knew chris from the time he was teaching english in morocco in the peace corp. when i was ambassador. he and i had been in contact because the national geographic society was signing a new agreement to do scientific exchange programs with the libyan government. he was really excited about that. and we had exchanged emails about how to begin facilitating the training of young libyans for the scientific exchange programs. he was someone who was everything that all of us ever hoped or aspired to be. either to work in the foreign service or be affiliated with one of the greatest groups of individuals that served this country abroad. ambassador, stay with us. we want to talk about that a
little bit more. nbc chief white house correspondent chuck todd is in washington with us. chuck, a somber ceremony there. it was. we have to remember how tough this has been on the state department, ambassador ginsberg can speak better to this. the first time an ambassador has been killed on duty in over 30 years. especially now when you think about the political problems that now the state department and the white house are going to have to deal with domestically when it comes to finding money and keeping money flowing to places like libya and the fledgling democracy or a place like egypt where you heard some emphatic pleas. i felt that s what you heard out of the president today. he was trying to make the case despite the pictures what you re seeing on your television screens this is not the time to withdraw from this yaifr as it goes into transition. clearly they re anticipating what is going to be. we ve heard the rhetoric on capitol hill. it s bipartisan. really only the guys li
embassy there. it s not just american embassies in danger in sudan mobs broke into the general embassy as well as our own where there are reports of gunshots inside the american complex. jim maceda is on the ground in cairo. ambassador ginsberg remains with us in new york. jim, cairo has seen some of the largest protests of the day. what s the mood? what s going on there? reporter: well, it s interesting. it almost feels like two different protests going on. on the one hand, you ve got the stand off which is in its fourth day between younger people, more hard core radicals who are only 200 or 300. and they are still in that cat and mouse stand off with riot police. we saw more tear gas today. we saw water cannons as well. and we also saw a big concrete wall go up between the protesters and the u.s. embassy. that s all happening inside a basketball.
if he s going to play games with the safety of the diplomats in cairo he doesn t deserve to have us running over there and offering him money under these circumstances. we have to basically send a strong signal to a new president that while he may be the new man in town, the new game doesn t have to be played under his rules. ambassador ginsberg, if we could look at the region broadly, a vexing question facing the united states right now is what s in the best interest of the u.s.? a sort of friendly cooperative dictator, though they may be brutally repressive to the people or a messy, uncertain democracy like in egypt and libya right now. the genie s out of the bottle in the middle east. the fact of the matter is every one of the countries going through a transition and it s going to take many acts to follow before we know what s going to happen, whether it s in egypt, syria, saudi arabia or
minister barack said yesterday that israel and the u.s. should find a way to resolve the differences behind closed doors. ambassador ginsberg, i wonder if this is a version of if you don t stop annoying me, i m going to turn this car around and go home right now. i mean, it seems very sort of childish to have your defense minister scolding two heads of state over having this sort of school talk out in the open. it s very disconcerting for these of us who are following this very closely. the fact of the matter is that israel is convinced that as long as iran continues to accelerate, its nuclear program and on the verge according to the international atomic energy agency to produce a weapon and saying that the united states is against developing a nuclear weapon and israelis saying what more do you want?