regarding the interior ministry, the secret police, the state apparatus that functions very much based on the power of the police. i mean, you have to remember the military senior several hundred thousand. the interior ministry has more than a million people working on some level for that entity within the egyptian government. it is very much what is in the daily lives of egyptians. so a very important question for egypt is, how will the military negotiate a new relationship, if it will indeed negotiate a new relationship with the interior ministry, the police, the secret police. this is how these regimes in the middle east maintain power with, the intimidation of the secret police, with intimidation from the police, the everyday police. we ve seen over the last few years through the power of social media some scenes of torture, intimidation of egyptian police against their own citizens. this is not going to be dismantled with one presidential speech. so it is so important that we
watches live pictures of this popular uprising, is the military in a position that it must usher in true change because it knows these demonstrators are determined at this point two and a half weeks into this movement? well, i think that s a question that we can t answer at this point. but in fact, let s keep in mind one thing. if president mubarak steps down, and of course, at point we don t know that for sure, it s only changing the head. the body, the state structure, it the ministry of the interior, which is massive, the army, it s a regime that has made egypt what it is today, not president mubarak by itself. and the army is very much part of that regime. in fact, in 1952, egypt had what later he call a revolution but it was a military coup d etat. and since then all the presidents have been from the military. we re not talking about the
imprisoned for about ten days, now has become an inspiration to so many of those protesters. is he someone, potentially, i don t know if he wants to have that kind of responsibility, but is he someone that would like to emerge as a political leader in egypt? reporter: well, my impression of wael ghonim is that he has no interest and he s made it clear that as soon as this phase is over, as soon as the tahrir demonstrators achieve their goals, he s going back to his old day job. he s got a day job at google, although he s taken a leave. i know you have to go. let me thank you very much. ask you a quick question before i let you go. is there one individual in egypt you see right now as potentially someone who could unite the country and take charge? reporter: you know, that s a very tough question, and i just don t know the answer to it. again, it depends on what the
said something to the effect that there is a full-scale revolt under way in egypt right now, i said to myself, well he may be right but it sounds a little premature. remind me when you tweeted that because you were obviously 100% correct. reporter: this was i think on the 26th of january, the day after the first demonstration, i was on the roof of the lawyers syndicate watching as hundreds of riot police were trying to put down a protest. and there were cars burning in the street on the sort of one block up. it looks like no matter what they tried with so many forces being mobilized to put down these protests, they just couldn t do it. and it was at that moment it just occurred to me that if this carries on much longer, this regime that, as i said before,
next few weeks to a change of regime in egypt. let s listen a little bit to the atmosphere coming from tahrir square right now. we re going to continue to follow this story with our team of reporters. ivan watson, frederik pleitgen, arwa damon and others all following the latest developments. wolf, back to you. thanks very much. i want to bring in an expert right now. nick burns is joining us once again. he s at the kennedy school at harvard university and nick is familiar to our viewers. he s retired u.s. state department official, former undersecretary of state. nick, talk a little bit about what the challenges are for the