news. two hostages, one an american accidently killed in a u.s. drone strike. as president and as commander in chief, i take full responsibility for all our counterterrorism operations including the one that inadvertently took the lives of warren and giovanni. coming up live reports from the white house, pentagon and capitol hill. also the subject of today s bunning pulse. should the u.s. change drone strike policy after hostage deaths? the spuls live now. we pulse is live now. we invite you to weigh in at pulse.msnbc.com. the senate voting on president s pick for attorney general. loretta lynch appears poised for confirmation. we re watching the senate floor. and former general david petraeus in court for sentencing on leaking secrets to his mistress. we begin with breaking news from the white house. u.s. officials confirming two hostages were mistakenly killed
location. the president, we are told, did not personally order the drone strike. it was carried out under what s called a normal policy, the normal drone strike policy. the president, however did take responsibility this morning. listen. as president and as commander in chief, i take full responsibility for all our counterterrorism operations including the one that inadvertently took the lives of warren and giovanni. i profoundly regret what happened. on behalf of the united states government i offer our deepest apologies to the families. jon: and yet, you know, despite the deaths of those two innocent hostages, this otherwise would have been considered a successful strike. i mean, adam gadahn and he was killed in a separate strike, i should add adam gadahn is a guy the united states has been going after for years. yeah. adam gadahn was killed in a separate drone strike within the
the al-qaeda terror operation around the world. in september of 2006, gadahn was on a videotape introduced by ayman al-zawahiri. later in 2013, august of that year, he was on video praising the death of our u.s. ambassador, chris stevens, in libya and urging muslims to offer militants rewards so that they can kill others. apparently, the strikes happened in january and we are finding out about them now. this morning i want to express our grief and condolences to the families of two hostages one american dr. warren weinstein and an italian, giovanni lo porto, who were tragically killed in a u.s. counterterrorism operation. warren and giovanni were aid workers in pakistan devoted to improving the lives of pakistani
there. reporter: bill something that is extraordinary about the limited information the white house has put out so far is that they give four names, and they say that none of the people were where they thought they d be. they say, yes, the two american al-qaeda, ahmed farouq and adam gadahn, were killed but they were not specifically targeted and yet two innocent hostages warren weinstein and giovanni lo porto were killed, but the u.s. had no reason to think they were in the region where the drone strike that killed them took place. they re revealing that a few months ago they did not know very much about where any of these people were. now they are all deadment two of them dead. two of them innocent, two of them members of al-qaeda. so the president is going to have a lot of ground to cover to explain why we didn t know where these people were and how the targeting process worked that an american and another innocent hostage ended up dead. bill: peter in your time at the
a very busy news day. thanks for hanging with us. the real story with gretchen stops now. sshgs. president obama says a u.s. drone strike accidentally killed an american and italian being held hostage by al qaeda. it all happened during a counterterrorism operation back in january. i m gretchen carlson and we are here to bring you the real story today. now an investigation is going to be launched into that strike. here are the victims. american doctor warren weinstein who was abducted in pakistan and giovanni lo porto an italian aide worker. pete doocy, what more are we learning about this tragic raid? we heard minutes ago from the presence secretary josh earnest in the briefing room, president