>> to advance his goal of closing the prison. "the wall street journal" reports that the process will begin with the transfer of some 30 nonyemeni detainees who have been cleared for release for several years, that would mark a significant step for an administration that has seen transferred slow to a standstill since president obama first took office. as part of the administration's bid at transparency, yesterday in a letter to congressional leaders, attorney general eric holder acknowledged for the first time, that the u.s. had killed four american citizens overseas. holder further admitted that only one had been targeted. killing in the 2011, killed in the 2011 drone strike were three other people, sammor khan, who grew up in queens, new york before leaving for yemen to become the creative force behind al qaeda's "inspire" magazine. and another person was accidentally killed by a drone strike while eating with several friends at a cafe. perhaps holder's significant admission was the killing of the fourth american, jude muhammed, a 23-year-old who attended high school and college in north carolina and later went missing in pakistan in november of 2011. mohammed was apparently killed by a u.s. drone strike 18 months ago. despite the fact that as of yesterday, according to "the new york times," his name remained on the fbi's most wanted list. an fbi spokesman, kathleen wright said on wednesday, that it would be removed. joining me today, senior fellow at the center on budget and policy priorities and msnbc contributor, jared bernstein and heather mcgee head of deem 0s. and executive editor of msnbc.com and msnbc political analyst, richard wolffe and joining us from washington, is mark mazetti author of "the way of the knife." >> an experiment that's lasted more than a decade, do you think we've learned anything from that experiment? >> we've learned how to use armed drones in hundreds of occasions. i said that a little flippantly. the the experiment has been in manhunting and killing that really from around 2008 on has been a pretty entense campaign. primarily in pakistan, but also in yemen and elsewhere. what the president is apparently going to lay out today. is some sort of framework that he hopes will last through the end of his term. and also, beyond his presidency. the question is this -- what you raise, is one of transparency. by moving drone strikes to this pentagon from the c.i.a., will that really mean far greater transparency that what we see today? >> what does transparency mean when the qualifications for drone strikes include continuing imminent threat to americans? that seems so fungible what does that practically mean? if president obama is trying to lay a framework for his successors, that seems widely open to interpretation, doesn't it? >> many things could be open to interpretation. but one of the things that i think that they're trying to put tighter restrictions on is the criteria for who can be killed and when. as is widely known, the practice for some number of years in pakistan has been to carry out so-called signature strikes, these are strikes that are based on patterns of activity. that where the c.i.a. doesn't actually know the identities of the people on the ground who they're targeting. but they have based on intelligence, and through surveillance, some reason to believe that these people are engaged in militant activity. these are very controversial. they have led to civilian casualties and this is one of the, one of the aspects of the targeted killing campaign that the obama administration is trying to, to rein in a bit with these new rules. >> mark, i want to open this up to our panel in new york for a second. richard. i think we must acknowledge that it is a big step forward, that the president is giving this speech. that holder has admitted that the united states killed four american citizens. i mean i think there are a lot of administrations that wouldn't even take that step, right? but then you read about the circumstances under which these americans were killed. you read from other people, accounts about how civilians in pakistan have been killed. i want to read an excerpt from what i thought was a devastating op-ed in "the new york times" today. a few days after obama's inaugural address, a c.i.a.'s operated drone dropped hell-fire missiles on kareshi's home in northeast waziristan. he was 13 years old. left with only one eye and shrapnel in his stomach. there was no militant present. a recent book revealed that mr. obama was informed about the erroneous target, but did not offer any form of redress. because in 2009, the u.s. did not acknowledge the existence of its own drone program in pakistan. >> i think you're being generous in saying that the president acknowledging what we already know to be true, is a big step. to be honest. and i think the president is, is giving himself, is trying to make himself look great by imposing what in fact are minimal controls in transparency on this program. we all need to understand, if this is going to be an honest speech, we need to understand that we still as a country believe we're at war and that at times of war, innocent people, including women and children will die. and that in this war, because we're not willing to put giant groups of troops on the ground, we can do it from the air, that increases the numbers of wrong targets which means women and children who will die and some american citizens. and that we as a country, think that is okay, by the way the other part of the speech is we've got not a great plan for closing guantanamo bay, if we're not going to lock up people or put them through the trial system, the criminal justice system, then what we're going to have to do is kill people on the battlefield. right? those are the policy choices that we as a country have made that's the kind of die long we need to have because actually there's probably majority support. we need to be honest about that. and say this is what we're doing and this is somehow we're conducting ourselves. but war does lead to innocent people dying and we believe we're at war. >> heather that's -- the question about the conversation i think is a fair one. i don't think this has been discussed and i don't think we know what the american public is ready to accept. i would tend to degree with richard that i think there's some acceptance of collateral damage. but again, the idea that the drone program is precise and that ultimately it prevents us from putting boots on the ground, that's the argument for the drone program but then you look at the number of civilian casualties and you know, lives are being lost. and where are we as a country in terms of acceptance of that? >> i think if you look at the public opinion polling, you will see that the american people have been very supportive of drones in general because they are fatigued by the idea of their brothers and sisters and neighbors being sent overseas. i do think, however, it's fair to say that at the end of the bush administration, we had a much more robust national conversation, that included the courts and groups like aclu, that included members of congress, that included people reading the newspapers and seeing the discussions about what are the parameters of war. if we have the forever war, where we are always on a war, at a war on a tan tick, which is terrorism, then when does it stop? if the battlefield can be in fact a cafe, are we okay with that? i'm afraid we haven't as a country reengaged in that conversation. so many years after nic9/11 we d to do that. >> i think a not a large step, a small step. and a step in the right direction. even that is important. my view is that the american people don't want to hear about any of this. we just don't want to know. so the fact that the president is getting in our face a little bit and saying, look, this is what we're doing and there are aspects of this that are wrong. i agree with what richard implies, there's a lot more wrong than what we're going to hear about this today and i agree with mark's view -- what does sharply curtail mean. >> we have a chart of drone strikes in pakistan have declined since an all-time high in 2010. 2009, 254 strikes, by 2013, we're only halfway through the year, but 12 strikes, 48 strikes in 2012. how much of that is due to the fact that the administration has realized that these drone strikes in some ways maybe they are one step forward in terms of annihilating a target. but two steps back in terms of the ultimate u.s. goals in the region in terms of fostering good will and/or radicalizing folks. >> i think there's some of that. as you said in 2009 and 2010, you see a tremendous spike in drone strikes in pakistan. and at some point do you have fewer targets and so there's going to be fewer drone strikes. but at the same time, you have seen in pakistan this tremendous backlash to the drone program. and in 2011, especially, great sort of divisions within the american government about the potential costs of the drone strikes. now even though we've seen the decline in drone strikes in pakistan, you've also seen last year, there was a big spike in operations in yemen. so some of the american operations have just short of shifted from pakistan to yemen. the obama administration really came into office and after a year in office, escalated the war in yemen and it's still going on. >> ben, there's also the question, i mean i think when we talk about sort of, how much we are at the beginning of this conversationing or maybe in the middle as far as u.s. counterterrorism policy post 9/11, one of the reasons i think this conversation hasn't happened is because of the sort of political realities, which is to say republicans have had a very hard time figuring out their position on this, right? i mean they don't, when forced to articulate a counterterrorism strategy that's measurably different from the president's, they've been between a rock and a hard place. the president has had a fairly aggressive counterterrorism policy in line with republican hawkish goals and at the same time there are civil liberties infringements which have stoked the ire of a lot on the far right like rand paul, we know that senator john mccain is pleased the drone strike program is being turned over to the pentagon and being taken outs of the hands of the c.i.a. and yet yesterday he tweeted his indignation over the fact that we have killed four americans in drone strikes, not just one. >> the republican leadership lives in fear of the tea party and the fact is over the course of the past now years, they haven't had a coherent foreign policy of the result of the rise of people like rand paul on the right. surprising no one, i don't think we've been giving the president enough credit in this discussion. this is a process to insure that our national security policy is consistent with our laws and our constitutional values that he took on from the moment he got into office that started with a review of our interrogation policy, a review of our detention policy. the hard work on guantanamo that the bush administration never did. which was to figure out who at guantanamo is a threat to the united states. who do we have the evidence to prosecute. and now those people have been determined. we know who is safe to transfer. we've reformed the military commissions process, so that it's consistent with the constitution and now we can try war criminals as well. >> ben, i appreciate your robust defense. but i would say on gitmo in specific, the president has basically let the transfer process languish. >> the person who was supposed to be in charge of the transfer process, there's not someone in that office. perhaps today he will annoyance that he's fast-tracking that. but the thing that's brought gitmo back into the news is that 103 people are trying to kill themselves by starving themselves to death. >> many of our european allies stepped forward at the beginning of the administration and made clear that they would allow transfers to their countries. one of the yemens who have been cleared. the pace of the transfer is going it take place at it was a slower pace than twab possible to do in europe. but republicans stood in the way of progress on this issue. the administration identified multiple prisons in the united states, places like thompson, illinois and standish, michigan, who were willing to build sup supermax prisons. >> democrats stood in the way of those transfer, too. it was a complete collapse of political willpower to transfer people over here into secure institutions. you can determine how much you like. but the criminal cases have failed. the military commissions have been stymied by their own internal conflict and there's nowhere safe to transfer these people and none of this is happening in a vacuum. just yesterday there was the brutal murder of an active duty serviceman on the streets of london. who in europe is going to take these people? never mind in yemen. >> mark, i want to bring you into this conversation because i think the massacre, the killing of a british soldier on the streets in broad daylight in the afternoon underscores who we are fighting or the lack of clarity thereof in terms of who we are fighting. we look at what happened in boston. we look at ha happened in london. these are increasingly localized self-radicalized folks who are not part of a broader terrorist network. whose affiliation with al qaeda may be tangential at best. it seems almost impossible to do it in this day and age. but it's incredibly difficult. for those reasons among many others, i think the president finds himself in what "the new york times" termed, a legal pretzel. the sort of folding in on yourself that you must do to be comprehensive in this situation. is difficult. to say the least. >> i think you're going to hear president obama talk this afternoon about how this, the threat has changed and al qaeda as it existed on 9/112001 is no longer there. but there are still other threats. now you know, the boston bombing should be obviously pointed out, would not have been stopped by drone strikes. and there is certainly concern in the intelligence community that in fact, drone strikes are having a radicalizing effect. radicalizing people who have would not have been so incline dodd carry out attacks. they might be now inclined to attack in europe or in the united states. so this is a concern right now. is you know, is the, are the actions, the operations themselves, creating a possible you know, new terrorists and possibly increasing the threat? this is the balance that has to go on. think it's one of the things you might see president obama deal with today. >> mark, before we let you go. i want to ask, because we've done great reporting from overseas and pakistan. in terms of the u.s. relationship with pakistan, they are our bed fellow in our war on terror, quote unquote. and u.s. approval in pakistan is at 11%. is an incredibly difficult contentious relationship. the drone strikes have not made it easier. i wonder what you foresee in the next few years in terms of that relationship? can this speech, can a pivot in our counterterrorism policy change that relationship measurably? >> it's a fascinating question. it is the sort of intensely dysfunctional relationship the united states has with pakistan. now pakistan has just elected a new prime minister who got elected, no surprise, on a largely anti-american platform. but he's going to have to lead and he's going to have to deal with the united states. one of the things the times reported today was that the c.i.a. was gradually going to be giving up drone strikes in pakistan and move those to the military. that would require some kind of a joint arrangement between the u.s. military and the pakistani military. that will be very interesting to see how that deal is made. because as we know pakistan has not publicly countenanced such drone strikes. so we'll see if a deal can be brokered. >> the "the new york times'" mark mazetti thank you for your time. after the break, new estimates say monday's devastating tornado in oklahoma caused up to $2 billion in damages. in the aftermath we're learning about how some of the people in those destroyed homes survived the storm. we'll hear their story coming up next on "now." ♪ [ female announcer ] from more efficient payments. ♪ to more efficient pick-ups. ♪ wireless is limitless. ♪ before tori was taking her kids to lunch in her new volkswagen... before her passat had passed 30 different inspection tests, and before several thousand tennesseans discovered new jobs on volkswagen drive, their cfo and our banker met for lunch. together, we worked with a team that helped finance construction of the world's first leed platinum auto manufacturing plant. that's the impact of global connections. that's bank of america. what that's great. it won't take long, will it? 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[ female announcer ] from meeting customer needs... to meeting patient needs... ♪ wireless is limitless. president obama will view the devastation in moore, oklahoma on sunday. the same day a memorial service will be held for the 24 victims of the tornado. officials say the twister damaged or destroyed 13,000 homes. impacting 33,000 people. to put that in perspective, the population of the city of moore is 56,000. meanwhile, we are hearing dramatic stories of survival. when the ef-5 twister struck, 22 people at the tinker federal credit union took shelt anywhere the bank vault. the tornado decimated the brick building, almost everything collapsed or was wiped away entirely except for the vault and the unharmed 22 survivors inside. yesterday they described the violent scene just beyond its walls. >> even through the closed door, you could hear the disintegration of what we're standing in now. there was no doubt i think in any of our minds that the building was gone on the outside. >> msnbc's craig melvin has more from moore, oklahoma. craig, the stories are unbelievable. >> yeah. you know we continue to hear stories like that. harrowing stories of survival in moore, oklahoma. i want to show you something right now. take a look at skit in moothe s. that is a welcome sight, for most of the morning, thunderstorms, there was lightning and a flash flood warning that expired around 10:00 a.m. so as a result, folks have been able to get back out and start to, start the clean-up process. sifting through debris. you can see some workers here. at what's left of a bowling alley. i want to show you, the before picture. of this bowling alley. this is, this is a bowling alley here in moore. and right now, again you're looking at what this thing looked like before the tornado struck. i had the opportunity to tour some of the bowling alley just yesterday. you can see one of the 13,000 structures that you mentioned in this town that's been damaged or decimated. and again, now the process of cleaning up, the process of recovery can continue. the very manies that have been used during that process are now back out on the roads. for the past three or four hours that was not the case. the first funeral happened at 10:00 a.m. local time today in central time. little antonia, eight years old, we found out that she died at the plaza towers elementary school she died with her 8-year-old friend, emily. we're told through a family member that they actually died holding each other during the storm. her funeral is today, two more funerals will happen tomorrow. you mentione