he said it was a prank. the recipient, a woman said "there have never been any inappropriate exchanges between anthony wiener and myself, including the tweet/picture in question." she's one of about 200 people he follows on twitter. we would love to get her side of the story, but she's been unavailable for comment. a person named dan wolf seems to be the only person who saw the original tweet and retweeted it. and that was before it was taken down. he denies hacking into wiener's account. what's odd is on may 11, someone with the name patriotusa76, a person named dan wolf tweeted -- >> chris lee was republican congressman from new york who sent this photo of himself to a woman he found on craigslist and resigned after it became public. we got the photo from gawker. wolf's tweet was sent on may 11th. that was weeks before the picture in question popped up on wiener's twitter page this last friday. yesterday, congressman wiener hoped to be able to put these questions to rest, and as you remember, he had a contentious interview or encounter with cnn's dana bash and ted barrett. here's a sample of yesterday. >> can you say why you haven't asked law enforcement to investigate what you are alleging is a crime? >> you know, dana, if i was giving a speech to 45,000 people and someone in the back of the room threw a pie or yelled out an insult, would i spend the next two hours responding to that? no, i would get back -- >> this is not that situation, though. >> i would get back -- you want to do the briefing? >> answer the question, was it from you or not? >> sir, permit me -- do you want me to finish my answer? >> yes, this answer. did you send it or not? >> if i were giving a speech to 45,000 people -- >> did you follow her on twitter and if so, how did you find her? what was the reason? >> you know, i have i think said this in a couple of ways, i'm not going to permit myself to be distracted by this issue any longer. >> you said you were hacked. and that's a criminal -- potential crime. >> dana, i'm going to ask that we follow some rules here. one of those is you ask the questions and i'll do the answers. >> i would love to get an answer. >> a correct answer. >> you do the questions, i do the answers and this jackass interrupts me, how about that as the new rule of the game? >> today, congressman wiener talked to reporters one on one, but his answers weren't necessarily much clearer. >> you will not flat out deny that that photograph is not you? >> here's what i will say, we're trying to figure out exactly what happened here. >> this is strange. you can't tell me definitively that is a photo of you or it is not a photo of you? >> here's what -- >> i'm reluctant to say to you definitively anything about this. >> even whether or not it's a photo of you? >> yeah. >> is it possible that photograph was on your blackberry, on your computer, that you or yourself may have taken of you and someone hacked in and took it? >> this is the problem. we could theoretically keep following these questions ad infinitum. >> it sounds like it was a photo of you. >> we're going to try to find out exactly what happened. >> is there a picture of you out there in your drawers that you are worried about? that it's not you? >> we've been sitting down for a brief moment and you're asking me questions are there pictures of me in my drawers. >> here's part one of what he told wolf blitzer today. >> did you send that picture to that college student in washington state? >> i did not. she says she never got it and doesn't know me. i certainly don't know her. this seems like it was a prank to make fun of my name. when you're named wiener, that happens a lot. i've got 45,000 twitter followers, hundreds of people that i follow. this seems like a prank that has gotten an enormous amount of attention. >> this is the picture, i'm sure you've seen it by now. is this you? >> i can tell you this, we have a firm that we hired -- i've seen it. we have a firm we've hired to get to the bottom of it. i can tell you this, that photos can be manipulated and one thing changed to look like something else. we're going to try to get to the bottom of this. maybe jon stewart last night had it right unfortunately, but we're going to find out. this has turned into this international who done it. what it is i think is a prank. i'm treating it as a prank. i'm trying to get back to the work i'm trying to do. i understand you want to pursue the story and we're going to try to help you as best we can. >> we want to resolve it once and for all. you would know if this is your underpants, correct? >> the question is -- i appreciate you continuing to flash that at me. i've said the best i can, we're going to try to get to the bottom of what happened here. i want to caution you, and you understand this, you're a pro, that photographs can be manipulated, photos can be doctored, and i want to make sure that we know for sure what happened here. it certainly doesn't look familiar to me, but i don't want to say with certitude to you that i don't know would be the certain truth. but i do know some certain truths here. but i didn't send any twitter picture. the person who it was allegedly sent to didn't get it. she put out a statement saying as much. i don't know her, she doesn't know me. it seems to me this is what goes on in the internet world, in the social media world of 2011 that sometimes these things happen. hundreds of thousands of times, just about every week, people have spam and hacking that goes on. it seems like i was the victim of that, and i don't consider it that big a federal offense, but people want to pay attention to it and i get it. when you're named wiener, it goes with the territory. >> have you ever taken a picture like this of yourself? >> i can tell you this, i have photographs. i don't know what photographs are out there in the world of me. i don't know what things have been manipulated and doctored and we're going to try to find out what happened. but the most important reason why i want to find out what happened is to make sure it doesn't happen again. obviously someone got access to my account, that's bad. they sent a picture that makes fun of the name wiener. i get it. touche. you got me. at the time it happened, i tweeted right away that i got the joke and i continued on with my life, and i think that frankly that's what i would encourage everyone to do. i don't believe this is a big federal issue. but people are free to pursue it if they want. >> but you would like to get to the bottom of it, so have you asked capitol hill police or any law enforcement authorities to investigate? >> have i called the cops or the fbi because someone sent spam? no. however, i did get a law firm who specializes in these things, who specializes in white collar crime, and they're going to get an internet security expert to get to the bottom of how we secure my account. >> did you send private messages to this woman in washington state? >> i'm going to -- look, i'm not going to get into how i communicate with people on social media and open the door to like did i send someone a note that said, thank you for following me, please tune in to my website in the future. i don't want to open the door to you saying what about this person, what did this person say. all i can say is, there was nothing, as she said, inappropriate. there's standard communication people have on social media. i tweet all the time. i've got thousands -- 45,000 followers, more than any other member of congress. it's a playful, combative feed. i encourage people to sign up at rep wiener. and this is what happens, people zing you back. and that's what happened in this case. >> do you do all your personal tweeting or do your staff members do also? >> i do, with some limited exceptions, but it's got my voice. >> does anybody else have your pass code? >> well, that's one of the things we're going to be looking into. not that i know of, but as i tweeted that night, i have had problems with access to my facebook account and perhaps we're going to find out what happened. i don't know, you know. i fear we're going to find out that perhaps security here was not particularly good, and maybe it's going to turn out to be a worse situation than it looks right now. now it looks like a prank. we're treating it like a prank. we're desperately trying to get back to business, and that's why we're -- >> here's what raised suspicion. on may 27th, you tweeted this, you were about to be on msnbc. you said, heading to 30 rock to chat with rachel at 9:00. and then you said, that's 5:45 in seattle, i think. the woman in question here was in seattle. >> it's a terrible coincidence and that's all it is. frankly, i didn't know the girl was in seattle from her feed. look, in the past on my twitter feed, i had done a similar joke about other cities. >> why seattle? >> it was a pure coincidence. i have no idea. part of the twitter ethos is their playful, dopey things. i don't think it was 5:45 in seattle. it was a pure coincidence, and frankly, you know, it's questions like this or why i was a little bit testy yesterday. at what point does the line get drawn where you say, you know what? this is just ridiculous now. you want to look at my twitter feeds and you find some times i referenced seattle and a lot of the things i said are very combative about republicans. i'm a very feisty -- >> i follow you on twitter. >> you know how i lean into it and take pokes at them all the time. you know, much more reasonable line of questioning would be like, maybe someone punked him back to get even for all of those times. that's what i thought at the time. there's a level of this, wolf, that has gotten crazy. maybe i contributed to it by maybe not being direct about it. maybe the statements i put out saturday and sunday didn't do the trick. i came here yesterday wanting to talk about the debt limit and tokyo reform. >> part two of the interview coming up. wolf asks is the congressman protecting anyone. and this. >> back on march 13th, a woman named ginger lee, who is a stripper apparently, she tweeted this. i'll put it up on the scream. you know it's a good day when you wake up to a dm from @repwiener. i'm a fan girl, y'all. he's my trifecta of win. do you have any idea who this woman is? >> his answer is coming up next. let us know what you think. we're on facebook or on twitter @ anderson cooper. i'll be tweeting tonight, but i'm not sending any photos. later, syria and a twist in the torture and killing of this 13-year-old boy. his father praising the regime responsible for his loss. is he speaking the truth or has he been threatened and forced to support the very regime that seemed to have killed his son? first, let's check in with isha sesay. isha, what do you got? >> they get plenty of tornados in springfield, missouri but not springfield, massachusetts. we'll tell you what happened when this one tore right up the river and right into town. much more just ahead. we share. shop from anywhere. and are always connected. we live in a social world. isn't it time we had a social currency to match? membership rewards points from american express. use them to get the things you love from amazon.com, ticketmaster.com, and more unexpected places. they're a social currency with endless possibilities. what's the most amazing thi♪ ou ever saw? maybe...it's something you haven't seen yet. the 2nd generation of intel core processors. this is visibly smart. talking about a text savvy democratic congressman anthony wiener and the photograph that was posted on his twitter account and one of his twitter followers who retweeted the photograph after tweeting weeks before. and the blogger with questionable credibility, andrew brightbart, has run with the story. at the end of the day, fair or not, many of the questions and most of the talk are being fueled by congressman wiener himself and how he's been handling this. here's part two of his interview with wolf blitzer. >> back on march 13th, a woman named ginger lee, a stripper apparently, tweeted this, and i'll put it on the screen -- >> do you have any idea who this woman is? were you sending her direct messages? >> this is another person who i have gotten dragged into this for no reason other than she was following me, and asked to be followed by me. i think what this is about is a fairly pro-forma thing that goes out that i send out to people as i follow them. thank you for following me. please check in at anthonywiener.com. i don't know who the woman is. i followed her for a moment, and then someone started tweeting that anthony wiener is following someone in that industry and i immediately, not wanting to cause trouble for her -- >> did you send her a direct message? >> most likely what he she's referring to, as a pro-forma thing, i sent thank you for following me. please stay tuned to anthonywiener.com for other things. i want to ask you, does this person, what did she do beyond tweet something that she's a follower of mine? you can probably find hundreds of people that do that. i would hope that you would leave these people alone. >> i guess one of the other questions is you deleted some photos from your twitter account. why did you do that? >> i had no idea what happened and i was a little freaked out ant it. so i deleted everything. >> did you ask followers to delete photos from your twitter account? >> from my facebook account? >> no, from your twitter account. >> no, i haven't. i was literally there tweeting about hockey, for those of you that follow my twitter, my bloody tivo didn't record a and so i missed the end of the tampa bay hockey game. and i see this thing pop up and i immediately delete it. i immediately delete the photo -- i'm not 100% sure, and then without any password or anything, i was able to get into the account where this photograph was hosted somehow, and i deleted that, and other photographs that were in there, as well. although there was nothing very controversial in there, but i deleted everything and i immediately tweeted my system has been hacked, darn it. >> are you protecting anyone? >> yes. >> who? >> i'm protecting my wife, who every day is waking up to these insane stories that are getting so far from reality. we've been married less than a year. to watch her watch these stories gets crazier and crazier about what is essentially a prank, a hoax. we went to bed that night not batting an eye. this is a goofy thing that happened. she married a congressman. she knows a little something about living in public life. she knows with that goes a certain amount of aggravation. i don't think she imagined it would be this, bizarre stories about people who are connected to me by eight or nine rings of connection on social media. i'm protecting her the best i can. >> we're going to leave it on that note. just to recap, you didn't send that photo to that woman in washington state? >> i did not send it to that woman in washington state. >> but you're not 100% sure whether the photo is of you? >> we're doing everything we can to answer that question, but we're doing an investigation. i just want to caution you, photographs can be doctored and manipulated and taken from one place and put in another. and i want to make it clear, this is in my view, not a federal case. in my view, this is not an international conspiracy. this is a hoax and i think people should leave it that way. >> and you're still leaving open the possibility of going to law enforcement? >> as i've said a couple times in this interview, i've left this in the hands of people that know this stuff far better than i. i'm not treating it like a federal case. it looks to me like what it is. when your name is wiener, people do wiener jokes about you on the internet all the time. people get hacked and people's identities get blurred all the time. and so i'm leaving it to the investigation but i'm not treating it like a federal case. >> congressman, thank you very much. >> you bet. >> you should have done this yesterday, by the way. >> touche. >> wolf joins us now with paul begala and gloria borger. wolf, it's interesting what you said at the end about he should have done this yesterday. do you think today he did well by himself to do these one on one interviews? >> yes. i think he did much better today than he did yesterday. yesterday was a disaster for him when he started giving a ranting speech every time dana asked him a serious question, he would go into talking points. and it just looked like he was stone walling, wouldn't answer what were basically simple questions. he could have said yesterday what he said today, i did not send that picture via twitter to that woman in washington state. he said that flatly today. he should have said it yesterday. he acknowledges that. he's leaving open slightly the possibility that that picture may in fact have been him. he says he doesn't think it is, but he's leaving that open slightly. what is apparent -- >> which i think raises a lot of eyebrows, like how can you not know whether or not there's a picture of you? obviously from that angle, it's an intimate picture. >> right, and that raises a lot of questions. it might be a picture of him, but he may not have tweeted that picture. apparently there are all sorts of ways that others can manipulate where you can take a picture that's out there and send it under someone else's name. he used apparently this internet service, this twitter service called wi-frog. and it's not that hard to get a picture and send it out under someone else's twitter name and make it look like that picture was sent. so he may have a good point there. we're doing more investigating on this, anderson, to come up with the answer whether or not he sent it or someone else and whether or not that was actually him. i think he's embarrassed obviously by some of the people he was following on twitter. >> gloria, does this story matter? i'm getting a lot of e-mails from people saying what are you doing even covering this story? i guess if it was a conservative congressman, i wonder if the liberals saying that would feel the same way. but does this story matter? so what if this is a picture of him? >> right. and i think in the grand scheme of things, it's not a huge story compared to the kinds of stories that we've been covering over the last couple of months. it's not a huge story at all. to me, it raises an interesting question though, anderson, about politicians and tweeting. i think what you get when politicians tweet or when their staff tweets for them, is a couple of things. one of the things you get is this kind of false sense of intimacy that people might feel, and you saw that in those tweets, about a politician, a member of congress. even somebody on television, right? and the relationship might be a little odd, a little dangerous, if you will, and a little inappropriate sometimes. and i think that politicians use tweeting to their benefit, because they can say, watch me on television tonight, i'm going to be on this show. or come to my event or logon to my website or use it like sarah palin does, which is to get her thoughts out without having us question her. but the flip side of that is, something a little odd, and i think when i heard the congressman talk about his playfulness on twitter and his feistiness on twitter, that may be good but sometimes it might not be. >> paul, what do you think of all this? should the congressman continue talking about this or can he now move on that he did all these interviews? >> wake me when we have a real sex scandal, anderson. you know, this is -- please. >> paul, if this was a conservative republican, would you be saying the same thing? >> yes. who allegedly had a picture of him taken in his underwear and someone hacked his account and sent it out? i do think the apparent hacking of a congressman's account, maybe it's