on thursday we learned that the fbi has now joined the pentagon s investigation into why what was supposed to be a routine patrol ended in an ambush that killed four american soldiers in niger. including why it took nearly 48 hours to recover the body of sergeant la david johnson. joining me now is nbc news pentagon correspondent hans nichols. hans, let s pull back for a moment for those bewildered by the fact we have more than 600 troops in niger at all. why were they there? what were they doing? well, we have around 800 troops in niger, most of them are building a drone base further north in the country. you need to have drones or at least the pentagon wants to have drones, i should couch it that way, all across africa. there are about 100 that do something call train, advise and assist. here across all of africa elsewhere countries like the philippines as well is bpc, building partner capabilities, that is standing up local forces so they can do counterterrorism.
the house and senate must devise, debate and pass a new budget before october 2nd. if the debt ceiling isn t raised by the start of the fiscal year, a day will come when the government won t be able to borrow money to pay all of its financial obligations. the policy center calls this the x date and projects it could hit sometime between october and november. to be more specific, the bpc projects that x date could also be october 2nd. but the more important date might be april 18th, tax day. if the treasury takes in less than expected, those two freight trains could slam into each other sooner than anticipated and congress not is not ready for the economic disaster that would follow. you can bet on this, if or when the trains do collide, it will be far messier than this. and when we come back, jonathan and my panel will
in the first two years of the obama white house he helped open up its visitors logs and persuaded the president to sign an executive order banning lobbyists from serving in the administration. now ison has been nominated as ambassador to the czech republic and the white house counsel, bob bauer, is taking over most of his funk, along with an official at the domestic house con sill. robert gibbs emphasized to our wendell goler that the administration is hardly losing its morale compass. there are a number of attorneys in the counsel s office and added position in the domestic policy council to oversee our efforts to reform the way our government works and to ensure its highest ethical standards. understand, though, wendell, that charge does not come from a participant in the council s office or a staffer at the bpc, it comes from the president of the united states. reporter: published reports say that bauer will
infrastructure is destroyed or damaged and so is the information, it is scattered, and assistance is coming in from all over, and the buildings with collapsed but the video shows it was. that is the situation. making it very tough especially for the search-and-rescue folks gathering in tokyo who want to head north. but they can t because the reactor is on the road that goes from the worst areas from the earthquake and tsunami. dave: this is frightening. and now, our guest says worst case scenario is it reaches the united states, the bpc is reporting that serious damage to the nuclear reactor is unlikely despite the large explosion so that is good news. give us the update with the evacuation. we heard we re talking about 12 miles or 20 kilometers was all they evacuated. what do you see this evening?