is it a scare tactic or a frightening sign of the times? and a debate over whether there is racism in the tea party movement after the naacp's bombshell allegation a top tea party spokesman joins us to face off with cnn contributor roland martin. we're standing by right now for a very important briefing on the gulf coast on the situation there, with the retired coast guard admiral thad allen getting ready to speak to reporters. we'll see it live. we hope to learn within the next few minutes whether officials will move forward with critical testing of the new well cap that could possibly stop the flow of oil. at this time yesterday many of our viewers will recall we were told that the so-called integrity test could begin at any moment. it turns out it already has been postponed. news organizations and the american public weren't told about the delay until about five hours after it happened. a lot of questions and a lot of anger about what is going on right now. enormous frustration. we'll go to thad allen in just a moment. let's go to cnn's ed lavandera in new orleans for the latest. >> reporter: what we've seen over the last 24 hours is kind of a good glimpse into what is going on behind the scenes as the scientists on both sides, bp scientists, government scientists continue to debate on the best way of moving forward. you really start getting this sense of what a critical juncture we're at in all of this, throughout all of this crisis, almost three months long now. this is as close as any kind of potential we've seen so far of being able to get this oil well under control. obviously it's a very delicate, very tense, very critical moment. you can see, imagine behind the scenes of the discussions that are going on, must be kind of revealing that way, very intense and frank as well. so we know that bp officials have been saying throughout the day that they felt comfortable about moving forward, that this was ultimately a decision they say by federal government officials and thad allen in particular to move forward and we've been expecting various technical briefings not only from bp folks but also from thad allen that have been slowly delayed and pushed back throughout the day so we're monitoring thad allen's appearance here in the new orleans area and we anticipate it would be happening very closely. of course what we're waiting for is if things will move forward on this integrity test, wolf, and what they say they've been waiting on is the pretest if you will, seismic readings down there on the floor of the gulf of mexico to determine whether or not this well casing that burrows deep into the earth is strong enough, has the structural integrity to with stand this test. they say they're worried the test could put more pressure on that, force oil to leak out of other places that they wouldn't be able to control so you can imagine they say they don't want to do any more damage that would further make this situation worse. we can see thad allen appearing there now and we mentioned very close to beginning this briefing here, wolf. >> stand by, ed. there is thad allen. he is about to go to the microphone there, the retired u.s. coast guard, national incident commander. he is going to update us right now on what is going on and when you see the live pictures of that cap you can still see the oil spewing from the top of that well. it's going full speed ahead. the goal is to start closing some of those valves at the top of the new cap but to do it in a way that won't cause further problems. let's listen to thad allen. >> thanks for coming here to the airport. i returned a short while ago from a visit out to the well site with secretary salazar, secretary of interior. we were on the helix producer 1 which is a production platform we have brought on to be able to increase our production. this is the first time a floating production unit has been employed in the gulf coast. it was a pretty significant event. we had a chance to talk to the crew and get a brief on operations and that was very helpful moving forward. out on site today in and around the well site we had 44 skimmers, 20 of them actually within 15 nautical miles of the source. there continues to be a robust response to the oil being released while we are looking at the new stacking cap and the shift and i'd like to brief you on that. as i briefed my president yesterday in houston we had intended to proceed yesterday with the well integrity test related to the new capping stack that was put on the well site. after we were able to remove the piece of riser pipe that had been there for many days. we had a meeting yesterday and went from about 11:00 in the morning to almost 3:00 in houston. we wanted to make sure we were getting this right, attending to all the details. this is a very significant test in the evolution of this response and our ability to increase our containment, our redundancy and capacity. i'l'll talk about that in a lite bit. we consulted extensively with outside experts. our science team led by secretary of energy chu consulted also with other members of industry regarding potential issues we should deal with. i will zero right in on what the discussion was mainly about and be happy to answer some questions about it. we have never been sure that we have known the condition of the well bore and the casing pipe since the event occurred. as we've gotten closer to having the potential to close in and do pressure readings on the capping stack, we have had numerous discussions about what the current status is of the well bore and the casings and the implications if they had been damaged or if there was any communication outside the well bore that might bring oil or hydro carbons into what we call the geological formation potentially to the sub sea floor. some questions were raised yesterday about the implications of leakage and how that interfaced with the test as we start to shut down the valves and increase pressure in the capping stack. i'll go over that process in a minute. what we might expect, even low probability, high consequence outcomes. as a result of that, we asked bp to go back and give us some more information on the structural strength of certain portions of the casing pipes. they had run down there particularly around the 22-inch and 18-inch casing pipes. we asked for some more information about assumptions that could lead to irreversible leakage outside the well from external experts. and we thought about what kind of thresholds we would need to look at as we ran the well integrity test. that took us about 24 hours to work through all of that. we've had a number of conversations and early this afternoon i briefed the president and members of the cabinet on the way forward and at this time will be releasing an order to bp to proceed with the well integrity test but we gave them some additional direction and we did this to make sure that we were taking due care and in some cases maybe an over abundance of caution to make sure we didn't do reversible harm to the well bore as we proceeded forward. what we are going to do when bp is ready and these procedures will start shortly, we will start to increase the pressure in the capping stack and we will do this in six-hour intervals and at each six-hour interval we will stop and we will consider a pressure data. we will look at information we are gaining from sonar, accoustic data, any remote visual data we have from remotely operated veeb ed vehic. i will put this in writing to bp so it will be an adjustment to the plan i previously approved. this test will run for a maximum of 48 hours at which time we will stand down, assess where we're at, and assess the next steps. two of the very positive aspects that can come out of this depending on the pressure readings that we find are an assessment of whether or not we can just cap the well at this point and the pressures can be maintained without damaging the well bore or the casings. we are also in the process of building out an enhanced containment strategy which includes redundancy so if one part of the system is not working we can continue to produce and capacity. as you know our current flow rate projections are 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day. we had intended by about this time to have 53,000 barrel a day capacity by bringing the helix producer online. what we have is a convergence of two events trying to bring that system up that produces 53,000 barrels and the opportunity because of weather to advance the capping stack installation and be able to test for pressure in the integrity of the well bore. these kind of overlap. i don't want to lose track of the fact that we're following a very robust containment strategy actually started in early june where we directed bp to come up with alternatives to increase redundancy and capacity related to the new flow rate numbers. so with that said, what's going to happen is we will be initiating the tests later on this evening and i'm going to stun you with my audio-visual aids here. because i'm at lake front airport. i've had no access to powerpoint. here we go. all right. everybody see this? okay. i'm going to explain what's going to happen here. you have at the bottom the blowout preventer and the lower marine riser package that are left over from the deepwater horizon loss. okay? that's right down here. we are currently producing off the kill-and-choke lines of the lower marine riser package and the blowout preventer through the kill line to the helix producer and choke line to the q 4000. okay? last week as you remember we removed the stub of the riser pipe and we put in what we called a flange spool. on top of that what will happen, which was significant, is we've now seeded the capping stack here and basically it has three rams, a mini blowout preventer, also has a kill line and a choke line. okay? so you basically have a small bop on top of the larger bop that is legacy to the deepwater horizon. here is how we intend to do the well integrity test. we will slowly take down production from the q 4000 and the helix producer later on today to the point where they are not producing anymore. that will force the oil up through the ploeout preventer into the capping stack. at that point the kill line, the choke line, and the top of the stack will be open. there will be product releasing from there. that's the reason we know we have the skimmers and additional capacity on the surface to deal with that. we will then in sequence close the middle ram here which will stop the flow out of the top of the stack and then we will take pressure readings. we will then close the kill line and take pressure readings. following that, we will use a remotely operated vehicle that will hook on to the little bar here that actually turns a valve and this choke line has been especially constructed if you looked at the video, you'll see kind of a yellow object with a curved up pipe. that is the choke line. that is the last way for oil to leave the capping stack. we will slowly close that very, very slowly in partial turns and measure pressure at the same time. in that manner we will slowly close the entire capping stack and start reading pressure. okay? as we do that, we'll be watching very closely the pressure readings. if the pressure readings stay low, that will tell us that the oil is probably going someplace else and we need to consider the fact we may have a breach in the well bore or in one of the casings. if that is the case and we have very low pressure readings for about three hours we will probably stop at that point. that will be the assumption and we will go into production, bring everything back online so we minimize the amount of oil that's going into the environment and we will assess the results of that test and that will also tell us and give us more information about what we will need to do when we try to start the pump. and finally to kill the well. if the pressure continues to rise we will monitor it every six hours. again, looking at accoustic information, seismic information, visual inspection of the sea floor and if there are no problems the decision will be made in six-hour increments to proceed. at the end of 48 hours, we will stop the test, assess all of the information we have. we will probably do another seismic run over the area around the well to detect any potential hydro carbon or methane leaks from the sea floor. and then we will assess whether or not we fleed need to go into another cycle of closing the capping stack down, taking pressure readings, and this will lead us possibly to two very positive directions. number one, at some point our ability to determine that we can, with confidence, shut the well in and understand we're not harming the well bore and the casings. this will be particularly useful during hurricane season. we have good weather right now and we'll try to take advantage of that as you know but if we have to leave the site, vacate the site, we need to know whether or not we can just cap the well and leave. if we're not successful in doing that we can still move to our strategy which was by the middle to the end of july to go to four production platforms and that will be producing at that point out of both kill-and-choke lines from both preventers. the legacy ones on the bottom and the new ones on the top to go to four production platforms. that's what gets us to 60,000 to 80,000 barrels a day which is in excess of our flow rate projections which are 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day with built-in redundancy in case one of the four went down we could keep operating and handle the flow rate in terms of being able to produce it and the capacity that we need moving forward. this last-minute evaluation was due to an over abundance of caution led by our technical team, secretary chu, his folks, other members of industry and the academic community. we sat long and hard about delaying this test. this was not easy. there are significant perceptions created around the country. i have my own perceptions of how we'd like to move forward on this. i think in the interests of the american people, safety of the environment and safety of this project moving forward was advisable to take a 24-hour break and make sure we were getting this absolutely right, understood the best way to deal with the unknown quantity which was the condition of the well bore and the casings moving forward and now we're prepared to do that. i'm glad to take your questions. >> admiral, david mattingly from cnn. cow characterize you what think the odds are for success? you're obviously moving forward but how confident are you that this is going to work? >> as far as containment, i'm very optimistic because we now have a -- have in place, regardless of whether we can shut in a well or not, we now have the cap in place that will allow us to go to four production platforms. now one of the problems will be we may not get a hundred percent containment but it will be much more than we have right now and we have capacity that is in excess of the flow rate. so this is good news. it will be terrific news if we can shut in the well but i don't think we can say that. i think there would be an over abundance of caution and i don't want to get anybody's hopes up that we can shut this well in until we get the empirical readings we need and try and understand as well as we can the condition of the well bore and casings. >> admiral, fox news radio. how much was this delay, in fact, a delay and a disappointment or a setback for everyone involved? >> well, i think everybody wanted to move as fast as we can but i think i understand and i think everybody understands this has been a substantial impact on our environment. there's been a substantial impact on the gulf coast, the people, the culture. we all understand the difficult times we're going through. what we didn't want to do is compound that problem by making an irreversible mistake. there are some ways where the hydro carbons can leak out and you say all right. we're going to tolerate that while we do the test because we know when we're all done we'll be able to produce the oil and there won't be a way for them to get out because there won't be any pressure forcing them out. but there are some instances where once that happened based on the type of geological formations and everything else that might not be reversible. and we wanted to have a very serious discussion about what we felt about that so those are the kind of discussions going on. it was an over abundance of caution. >> all right. there he is, thad allen, the national incident commander, the retired coast guard admiral making it clear after a 24-hour delay they are going forward. right now they've given the green light to bp to start these tests to stop every six hours to evaluate the tests will continue he says for a maximum of two days, 48 hours. these are critical hours right now. ed lavandera was listening and is down there in new orleans watching what's going on. we can't stress how sensitive this is right now. if it works, it will stop the flow. if it doesn't work, they go back to plan b and they've got all of those ships atop of the gulf of mexico that will contain, at least try to contain much if not all of that oil. these are critical moments, ed. >> oh, no question, wolf. we've been covering this story for almost three months so to be able to get to this point i think you can see in listening to what thad allen is saying there that this is the best shred of hope they've seen in quite sometime. to put it into a better perspective you have to remember we are probably about a month away, still, from that first relief well not only getting to where it needs to get under ground but also to be able to kill off the line for good. if this were to start working in the next 24 to 48 hours, essentially this process could be sparing the gulf of mexico from almost another month's worth of millions and millions of gallons of oil spewing into the gulf of mexico. that's why the intensity and the critical nature of this you can really kind of see permeating from thad allen's words here. there are thousands of people working on this who clearly are desperately hoping this works. >> stand by, away from this story. these are critical hours we're watching right now. you see the breaking news. the go ahead to begin this test, given by the federal government, and we're going to be watching all of this very, very closely. all right. we'll stay on top of the breaking news and get reaction from a leading congressional critic of bp democratic congressman ed markey of massachusetts who is standing by live. we'll get his reaction to what we've just heard and more. and a newly revealed video apparently featuring the man who confessed to the botched times square bomb attack. and president obama's new warning to the people of 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