is no proof of that, just questions. but the hearings are exposing inconsistent, sometimes nonexistent explanations from the obama white house. yesterday, we told you about solyndra, a now-bankrupt clean energy company whose default left taxpayers with a half-billion dollar bill. the obama administration approved that loan despite warnings the company's plan didn't add up. congress now investigating whether political support for the president greased the wheels. tonight's example is a company called lightsquared. it was green lighted to build a new broadband internet network despite objections from several government agencies. the pentagon complained the most, warning this new network could undermine satellite-based weapons targeting and other sensitive systems, not to mention your efforts to get driving directions. >> based on the test results and analysis to date, the lightsquared network would effectively jam vital gps receivers, and to our knowledge thus far, there are no mitigation options that would be effective in eliminating interference to essential gps services in the united states. >> two big questions tonight. did top obama administration officials give favorable treatment to lightsquared, including overruling the pentagon, because its major investor is a big obama campaign and democratic party fund-raiser? and in its response to this and other inquiries, is the white house violating this commitment? >> let me say it as simply as i can. transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency. our commitment to openness means more than simply informing the american people about how decisions are made. >> on that transparency question, it seems pretty clear the administration is falling short. exhibit "a," the federal communications chairman, julius janikowski, himself, a big obama fund-raiser had a huge role in green lighting the lightsquared project. janikowski was called to testify at today's hearing on the controversy, but he didn't show. >> personally, i believe this is an absolute effort by the chairman to avoid the oversight questions by congress, to avoid the responsibility of the issue of how this will affect gps and what the fcc's process is appears to be irregular as to how this manner is moving forward. >> let's dig deeper beginning with the congressman, the chairman of the subcommittee looking into the issue, republican congressman michael turner of ohio. i want to start, mr. chairman, with your own words about why you thought it was so important to have this hearing. let's listen. >> we cannot afford to have federal telecommunications policy, especially where it affects national security to be made in the same way the white house parceled out a half billion dollars in loan guarantees to the failed corporation, a large campaign contributor to the president. >> that's a brig big charge off the top there, saying this was done for political reasons, that the lightsquared deal and the solyndra deal, we covered that yesterday, was done for political contributions. is that what you think? do you have evidence to support that? >> the issue is that the fcc chairman refused to come before our committee and answers questions as to why they would be proceeding with the lightsquared technology at a time when there's unambiguous testimony from general shelton that this absolutely conflicts with gps and threatens our national security. so, these are questions that you have reported on, that you know. i was merely citing them, indicating these are things we have to be concerned about as we look through an irregular process going through the fcc and unambiguous answer from and unambiguous answer from dod that this threatens our national security. >> i think there's 100% reasons to explore this and to provide oversight and find out why the pentagon objections were ignored, to find out why the chairman of the fcc wouldn't show up at your hearing, when i assumed they said he was going to come. for you, as the head of this committee, and new republican majority as it asserts more oversight, is going to face these questions. you're saying this wasn't a bad judgment, you think this was a political judgment. can you prove that? >> i think what people are saying is that the fcc is following an irregular process. this absolutely effects our national security. the fcc chairman failed to come before our committee and answer the questions as to why this is an issue that's even proceeding. there are serious questions as to what is occurring here. we know general shelton is very concerned about the process moving forward. these are the types of questions and reports circulating that certainly the fcc needs to take into consideration and that they need to answer. why are we in a situation where unambiguous evidence shows this affects our national security and our gps and things appear to be proceeding? >> i'm going try one more time. i agree there are legitimate questions that need to be answered. as you seek to answer them, do you have any evidence before you on this day where you can say, a-ha, the political contributions overruled the other objections of another agency or is that's what you're trying to find out? >> why is the fcc going forward with an irregular process with a system that absolutely violates our national security and our gps? and there are questions that clearly the fcc chairman did not want to answer by not appearing before our subcommittee today. >> what was their explanation why he didn't show up? >> well, he had indicated he thought it would prejudice the process when he was in my office. i'm very concerned about, well, what is the process? how is this moving forward? why is it that it's unambiguous statements from dod that this violates our gps or national security, yet the fcc is continuing to advance this? the reports of how this is moving forward should cause everyone concern. those are the issues we need to discuss. >> let me ask you, i'm try to get in a point, i'm not sure i can. your gut judgment on this, based on what you've seen in documentation so far, is this a bad decision or a corrupt decision? >> well, i think, you know, the outcome is the same. the questions are why would this be moving forward and why shouldn't this be stopped? it's fairly clear this violates our national security, but yet no one can tell us exactly what the status is at the fcc, why this is moving forward and really the answer is this should be stopped. >> the outcome might be the same, but again, do you understand what the responsibility that you have, that you have to be careful about saying things like "doled out for political purposes" if you can't have a piece of paper or have witnesses to say, here's the proof? >> what we want to ensure is there is not undue influence. that's what hearings are for. that's why we're reviewing this process and looking at something which appears to be fairly clear as a threat to our national security. >> congressman, appreciate your insights tonight. we'll keep watching this issue as your hearings keep going. >> thank you. >> thank you, sir. let's turn now to someone who's done groundbreaking reporting on this issue. fred schulte, senior reporter for the senate for integrity. i was not trying to be a jerk with the congressman but trying to be careful. when you have contracts that go out to people who have been political supporters it raises smoke. based on your reporting, obviously legitimate questions, how did this happen? did politics play a part? as of today, can we connect the dots? >> there's no question that lightsquared has had friends in high places. many people invested in the company early on were obama supporters and democratic contributors. i think that it remains to be seen whether there was any favoritism. i mean, i think that's one of the things we're trying to look at. >> and the company tonight put out a pretty strongly worded statement denying any political influence. it said any suggestion lightsquared has run roughshod over the regulatory process is contradicted by the reality of eight long years gaining approval. they say they were doing this back in the bush administration, trying to move forward. is that fair? >> well, you haven't been looking at what they did during the bush administration. we filed a freedom of information act request with the obama white house to find out what they were doing at the present when it seems to be more relevant. and we got back a number of e-mails that show that they had a number of contacts with senior white house officials and were trying to get a lot of facetime and meetings. >> i want to talk about that. because i played a bite from the president at the top of the show, his promise for transparency, his promise to be the most transparent administration in history. we have some of the e-mails you got under the freedom of information act. i've had this experience in the past. this seems pretty stunning. i think we can show some of them on the screen. you're trying to get this information, waiting and waiting. there are what we call redactions. you see a b-6 in a lot of places. that's a code. the government can keep policy information. when they delete the names of who's at a meeting, it's hard to figure out if anything bad is happening. >> it is. if you've done this kind of work, we've been doing it for some time, you get back records that are more black lines, in this case yellow lines, than anything else. it's not only that. the attachments to the e-mails and anything that they perceive as indicating what their feel is on something, they wholesale black it out. >> your bottom line here is what in terms of your biggest question about something wrong? >> right. well, the big bottom line is that you can't figure it out from records that when you have claim of transparency and then you get records that are incomplete and leave out key details, you're really left with a situation where you have to look at what they did disclose. and i think that's what we did. >> and some of that shows pretty damning, hey, we're friends with the campaign, hey, guess what, he's coming to the town to give the president some money, can we get a meeting at the president? they have meetings across the street from the white house. they meet across the white house, which gets them out of their promise of the white house. >> they did indeed have meetings at the jackson place right across from the white house. yeah, those aren't in the white house logs. that's another study we've done is to look at the white house logs. that's another issue in which they're claiming unprecedented amount of transparency. yet the white house logs often don't give you real pictures as to what's going on either. >> lot of questions, frustrating. fred schulte, doing a lot of reporting. before we go, i want to use the wall to show you at home the issues at stake here. this can be confusing. lightsquared is the company got the contract. the fcc gave it out. the department of defense raised objections. what are we talking about? lightsquared is trying to build the nationwide wireless broadband network. the country could use that. 260 million people would be connected under this. the problem is there are issues here. imagine a broadband network like radio, it's complicated, it has a frequency. one of the issues here, if you tap this in, normal gps on this frequency. lightsquared on this frequency. if there are any variations and that's routine, you have interference. what could that impact? it could your ability to get driving directions if there's a lot of interference. of more concern, it could impact air traffic control and the like. a lot of farmers use gps to position their equipment in the fields to know where they are on big farms. they've been complaining about this. and perhaps most critical, the defense department uses satellites, gps, to position its weapons, to steer its weapons and keep track of troops overseas. these are the issues raised here. the question is, how do you fix it? here's one thing lightsquared proposed. take its frequency and drop it down a bit. if you have a lower frequency, you have less chance of interference. lightsquared said it could reduce the power in some of its towers and reduce the interference. these are the proposed fixes. the general doesn't think they'll work. there are a lot of political questions about why they just happened. that's why we had fred schulte in here and why we'll keep our eye on this as congress is in the hearings. still ahead here, michele bachmann tries to recover from her later campaign stumble. could it be the last straw? in libya today, cheers for the victors, including the leaders of britain and france. but next, are dangerous extremists lurking behind the scenes? 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[ speaking foreign language ] >> thank you. thank you. >> the british and french offered to help the libyans secure the gadhafi regime weapons and captured the former dictator. these promises go beyond the original mandate to protect civilians. beyond the cheering, there's growing concerns tonight in libya about where the new libya is heading, about how much influence radical islamists may have. a good starting point for a conversation with cnn's fareed zakaria. fareed, i want to start with cameron and sarkozy, the president and prime minister there. listen to prime minister cameron. listen to what france and great britain will help do now. >> we must keep on with the nato mission until civilians are all protected and until this work is finished. we will help you to find gadhafi and to bring him to justice. and we also want to help you to take the dangerous weapons out of libya, whether that is surface-to-air missiles. today britain is committing itself to helping you with taking -- >> from the beginning here, what the nato mandate said on paper, finding gadhafi, getting rid of weapons, that's new ground, right? >> yes, it is new ground. you can see what's happening. the campaign is morphing inevitably into a kind of nation building, because prime minister cameron said protect civilians. make sure all civilians are protected. from whom? perhaps from various gangs, from some elements of al qaeda-type groups, some rogue operations. so we have to provide order in the cities, in other words. does that sound familiar now from iraq and afghanistan? we have to find gadhafi. we have to take the mines out of the ground. it's all commendable stuff, but it's, as you say, a big stretch from the original mission. i will point out this is why i think it has been very wise for the obama administration to lead from behind, if you will. they're telling the french and the british, if you want to own libya, it's all yours. >> and i want to come up with the al qaeda concerns in a second. on the issue of finding gadhafi, we have some video, amateur cell phone video. hundreds of gadhafi forces advancing. as they advance, do we think the end is near and gadhafi either will be captured or killed? >> it's very tough to say, john. it's a big world. libya is a big country. most people don't realize, it's actually the biggest country in africa with the smallest population or one of the smallest populations. so, there's a lot of places to hide. i think, you know, i've said consistently, i don't believe he will surrender. that part i think i have a strong sense of. he's a real revolutionary. he's not a bureaucrat. he's a soldier. he will try to go down fighting or escape in some kind of mysterious way. but whether they can really find one man in all of libya, if he's even still in libya, and i think he still is, it's a big country. >> "the new york times," a front page story today raising a question i think could be asked about many of the countries going through these dramatic changes in the region and that is as the old power gets kicked out or leaves, what comes in next? "the new york times" reporting that there are growing concerns that radical islamists are the best organized forces in libya and, therefore, could have disproportionate influence. a concern there and across the region? >> it's a concern there, it's a concern in egypt. i think that you put it exactly right, john. the concern is not that they are wildly popular but that they are well organized. it's not clear the libyan people are strongly islamist. it's clear the islamic parties are strongly organized. in this political vacuum, what happens? you already see some of the jockeying. people are already taking shots at the interim leaders, mr. jabril and others. my own sense, however, is that the libyan movement is diverse, there are lots of different elements. so, no one element seems strong enough to dominate. certainly not the islamic one. it doesn't seem that powerful. and it's also clear that people having paid for this revolution in blood are going to quiet down easily. if they feel the revolution is being hijacked by islamic organizations that didn't really participate in the revolution itself, i don't think they'll take that lying down. so, cause for concern, but really, the libyan opposition seems pretty broad-based, pretty diverse with lots of non-islamic elements as well. >> that's a big shift here. we're going to talk more about this tomorrow in much greater detail. take a minute, before i let you go tonight, you're working on this special this weekend for the biggest issue here at home. how do we create jobs? give us a preview. >> what we're trying to figure out is really two things. why is this happening? why is it that this recession is taking so long to get back on track? it will be five years before we just recover all the jobs lost in this recession. it's unprecedented since world war ii to have a recession -- a jobless recovery that long. we go into that and ask practical questions, how do you create jobs? we do it with the people who are now called job creators. we asked ceos of general electric, dow chemical, of starwood. we talked to others as well. the focus is really practical, nonideological solutions. figure out how to get the jobs first then worry about what ideological box it lands on. >> we'll dig deeper on the details with that one when fareed joins us tomorrow night. if you can't be with us tomorrow night, i can't think of one, watch the fareed zakaria special "restoring the american dr