This is stay off the roads. Stay home. Let the public works crews do their job over the next 48 to 72 hours. Thunder snow could push these numbers up to 28 or perhaps even 30 inches of snow in some locations. Im just really scared, terrified. Right now on Andrea Mitchell reports monster storm. The northeast braces for a powerful and potentially historic blizzard with whiteout conditions. Hurricane force winds and snow totals of potentially up to two feet near boston. Trying to get ahead of the storm, airlines have already canceled more than 3,000 flights to the northeast. Well air live with Team Coverage in the storm zone. In washington a different kind of storm. I am honored to appear before you today as the president s nominee would you hold, please . Well ask the police to please remove john brennan takes tough questions about his connections to waterboarding and drones. Do you believe the president should provide an american the opportunity to any american who joins al qaeda will know full well that they have joined an organization that is at war with the United States and that has killed thousands upon thousands of individuals, many, many of them who are americans. Do you have a personal opinion as to whether waterboard issing torture . I have a personal opinion that waterboarding is rep rehence sxibl is something that should not be done. Former president bill clinton rallying House Democrats today at their annual retreat in virginia. Earlier the same retreat, nancy pelosi and the democrats hosted a foe political figure steven kol better. Earlier still comedian colbert revved up the crowd, but last night he was all about the coming storm. Please stay off the roads unless you have snow tires, snow chains, or one of these things. If yworst hit will be boston which is expecting fivefoot snow drifts. My god. If that happens to new york, we wont find our mayor until spring. Good day. Im Andrea Mitchell live in washington. The northeast is bracing, seriously, for a powerful potentially historic blizzard. States of emergencies have already been declared in new jersey, connecticut, and rhode island. The snow began falling earlier this morning across manhattan and the outer burrows and will continue throughout the day potentially bringing new york to a standstill. Blizzard watches and warnings are in effect through tomorrow up and down the east coast, including in new haven, connecticut, where you see the snow falling on the green at yale and a wintry mix at the State Capitol in providence, are you riry. Parts of new england could be digging out by three feet by tomorrow. Joining us from prov dinse is ron mott. Thank you so much. Its beautiful. You look great. This is a serious storm. It is a serious storm. You know, those jokes aside there, you can kind of laugh at this storm at this moment, but in three or four hours its not going to be a laughing matter at all. Were getting probably our first half inch ar so here in providence. There was one National WeatherService Forecast that called for as much as 42 inches of snow in providence. Its hard to get your head around that amount of snow. Now just a few minutes ago the governor here lincoln chafy told all nonemergency state workers this were done for the day, to start their weekends. Hurry home and get off the roads while theyre still fairly manageable. Weve been out here all day. Traffic has been light around downtown because a lot of folks, i think, heeded those warnings and stayed home today. They were able to stay home with their kids and their families and get out of the way of this storm. Now, the real concern, andrea, Going Forward is not just the snow, but the winds coming off the Atlantic Coast sometime tonight when these two systems get together, and the violence erupts. That shurned snow theyve been talking about, were expecting here in providence wind gusts of 40, 50 Miles Per Hour up the coast. We might see some wind gusts approaching Hurricane Force strength. 75 Miles Per Hour. You throw the wind on top of all this snow, its going to be a disaster, and theyre telling folks please, please, please do not take yourself and put yourself at risk tonight and get home and stay safe at home and not risk it. This is a very beautiful scene, obviously, but it can be very, very dangerous. They want to keep these roadways open for emergency officials only. If you get stuck out there, you may be stuck out there for a while because this snow is not going to stop until sometime tomorrow afternoon. Its a big storm, and were just ready to start hunkering down here in providence, andrea. Ron mott, thank you so much. Its a warning that needs to be repeated and reemphasized. You cant repeat it too often. Thank you. The blizzard, as ron was just pointing out, has already created a travel nightmare. We are seeing icy roads and long gas lines already as people are getting ready there in long island to try to get gas. More than 3,000 flights have already been canceled across the northeast. Even more delays and cancellations are now expected as the storm picks up speed. Nbcs rahema ellis joins me now from La Guardia Airport in new york where more than 600 flights have been canceled today alone. It can only get worse, and more lines and more cancellations coming up. Its not the frenzy that they have on a friday because i think people got the memo. A storm is coming and cancellations are underway. What do people do when they come to the airport . They check in at the board. Take a look at this board, if can you see it. Tony is going to pan over. What you see is a lot of yellow. That flight is still scheduled to take off just a few moments ago. Some are really worried about if their flight tomorrow will be canceled. In fact, it looks like it might whereby people told us, andrea, that they have come to the airport early hoping to change their flights, and the good news is that the airlines are granting a waiver to the penalty fee. They are granting the opportunity to make changes because they dont want people with no way to get out. They may cancel everything. If anything is going out, its going to have to happen soon, but there are fewer and fewer flights leaving from here. Andrea. Rahema ellis, thank you so much from la guardia. A little more complicated today to say the least. Joining me with the storms track is the weather channels nick walker. Thanks so much, nick, for being with us. Tell us what to expect and when. Yeah. Its very unusual to see a forecast like this. New york city going to see 12 to 18 inches. More like a foot of snowfall expected for new york city. With places like new york, youre under blizzard warnings out towards long island and northward. We will see, we think, blizzard conditions as those winds really begin to kick up. Especially tonight. Maybe 40, 50 Miles Per Hour to blow that snow around and limit your visibility down below a quarter of a mile for a long period of time. Youre in the rain right now. Mixed with sleet. It is snow toward the north and cooler air settling in, it is all going to turn to snowfall. Weve given this a nine out of ten. That means were going to find very widespread impacts here to the city. A mixture of snow and rain here today. Probably those winds up to around 20 to 30 Miles Per Hour. Then tonight it really gets going. The snow will be on the increase with eight to 12 inches falling. Blizzard conditions will prevail as those winds kick up, and those blizzard conditions lasting even into tomorrow as the snow tapers off will still see the wind blowing the snow around and that could still cause the conditions to be blizzard conditions all the way through much of tomorrow. Blizzard warnings up from boston as well. This may very well turn out to be among the top five snowstorms in history if not the biggest in history. Andrea. Of course, were all concerned for the people who have just gone through sandy a little more than two months ago along the east coast there in the new york, new jersey area. High winds and storm surges are not good news for anybody in the lowlying areas. Thank you so much, nick walker, from the weather channel. Meanwhile, storms afoot here in washington. As weve been saying, president obamas nominee to head the cia faced tough questioning yesterday about waterboarding during the bush years when he was at the cia and the current white houses huge expansion under his direction of targeted killings by drones. Your view seems to be that even if we could save american lives by detaining more terrorists, using only traditional techniques, it would be better to kill them with a drone or let them go free rather than detain them. Can you explain the logic in that argument . I respectfully disagree, senator. I never believe its better to kill a terrorist than to detain him. We want to detain as many terrorists as possible so we can elicit the intelligence from them in the appropriate manner so that we can disrupt following terrorist attacks. Joining us is john mclaughlin, the cias acting director and with John Hopkins School of studies. Thank you for being with us. You were a career cia person, and you know the drill. Its very clear that absent anything occurring that we dont know about that john brennan is going to be the cia director. Do you think that this conversation about drones, though has been expanded enough or not enough because this is the first weve really had a chance to look at this exponential expansion of targeted killings. Well, andrea, i think youre right. John, i believe, will be the cia director. I think he will be confirmed. I think he will be a very good cia director. I suspect were at the front end of a longer discussion about the drones. The paerp that i think your Network Recently set around after receiving it opened up a discussion, i think, and im sure that once john is at the cia, assuming he is confirmed, he will give a lot of attention to broadening this discussion. I think he favors that. He he has been in charge of a policy that has sixfold increased the targeted killings with drones. He was asked about it, but a lot of the questions that were in the actual legal memos that eventually under pressure, the white house turned over yesterday and under very tight restrictions where staff lawyers could not look at it also, they could not ask questions about that, so none of that material could be on the table yesterday, and there hasnt been a full understanding, i think, by the american people, as to the cost benefit naltsz of this policy. It is creating a big backlash in yemen and pakistan and other places. Well, these are really tough questions. I think you could see that in the hearing. I think the snoshz, too, were grappling with these issues. They were taken positions, but i think they all realized they are tough questions. Its a fair question to ask whether were achieving what were trying to achieve in terms of suppressing the recruitment of terrorists and so forth. In the use of drones, i would say i think maybe to reinforce something that john brennan was trying to emphasize, that the intelligence that goes into the targeting of these drones, i believe i dont do this anymore, but i believe is more precise and careful than most people imagine. I notice that chairman feinstein in the course of her rashgsz sidestepping classified information made that point that from what the committee sees, the targeting is very precise. Do you think that the president should have the sole phenyl authority over this. Were told by public reports that there is actually a kill list and that the president goes through names and the intelligence himself. Should there be some other check and ballot ability of a president , any president , to make life and death decisions over americans who are connected to terrorist groups or are suspected of being connected to terrorist groups. I think thats a tough question. I think it does bare examination. He clearly is responsible and accountab accountable. Since Lyndon Johnson did get involved. Since then president s typically have not gotten into the targeting loop that is choosing specific targets. That is a departure from past practice, and i think the idea of looking at a court or some other thing inserted into the decision process has some merit. And what about John Brennans defense of enhanced interrogations . You were familiar with that era as well at the agency. He said he spoke out against it, but only to colleagues. Not to superiors apparently. Senator chambliss said, you know, theres no record of anyone satisfying you objected to what was later deemed by the attorney general to be torture. Well, you know, listening to John Brennans answers on those questions, i dont think he is trying in any sense to present himself as a crusader against the program that existed at that time. I think he is saying that he spoke off line quietly to some colleagues about reservations he had on some aspects of the program. I dont doubt he did that. I know john to be an honest, truthful person, but he also respected the chain of command at that time, and the program was authorized by the Justice Department and the other point that bears emphasis is that in the job he had he was not in the chain of command, if you will, for either creating, authorizing, overseeing, implementing the program and in his subsequent jobs after leaving the agency had no operational responsibility. Do you have any regrets about that period . You were in the chain of command. I dont. I dont. You know, one has to get back into that period of time and reconstruct the context. Were talking ten years ago. Just to give you an example, there was a moment early in the post9 11 period when we knew that bin laden had talked to two Pakistani Nuclear scientists when we had found a crude diagram of a Nuclear Weapon designed in afghanistan and when we had what appeared to be credible reports of a Nuclear Device in new york city. That was the atmosphere of that time, and we were in a very different place today. Were in a very different environment. Great progress has been made against al qaeda, and i dont look back at that period with regrets. I think the things the cia did then saved lives, and that that is one of the reasons why we are in the position today to say that theres been a lot of progress on this problem. John mclaughlin, thank you very much for the context. You bet. And coming up next, east coast residents gearing up, bracing for another major storm. Only three months after hurricane sandys devastating hit. New york congressman peter king joining us next. [ male announcer ] when was the last time something made your jaw drop . Campbells has 24 new soups that will make it drop over, and over again. From jammin jerk chicken, to creamy gouda bisque. See whats new from campbells. Its amazing what soup can do. Blizzard heading up the coast is targeting many of the same residents who are still trying to recover from Superstorm Sandy just a little more than three months ago. In new york congressman peter king serves on the House Homeland Security committee and joins me now from long island. Well, congressman, your community took such a heavy hit. How are you bracing for this storm . Everything that can be done is being done, and Sussex County is pulley mobilized. New york city is fully mobilized. One of the dangers we have, though, is many of peemt are living in homes that are still partially destroyed. This he may be living in the top floor of a twostory house with a bottom half of the basement destroyed. Also, the shoreline has been dramatically weakened. Even though the surges wont be as great as they were during sandy, it will be much harder to resist because of the shore lien thats been de stated so badly. Were hoping for the best. I guess one advantage is ok a friday night and into saturday at least the you know, the crews will be able to go out without worrying too much about traffic being in the way. You know, were really bracing. Its been a tough time. Again, in new york we dont like to complain. We dont like nen to feel sorry for us. We just want when its over that we get treated the same as the rest of the country has gotten treated. What about Power Outages and the utilities prepared nor . Weve been doing stories ive seen on a daily basis of people who, as you point out, are living in one room or two rooms, dont have heat yet in some places. Yeah. Thats the big question mark. In the last storm, sandy, the Long Island Power Authority failed completely. We had almost a million customers who are out of power and that went on for quite a period of time, and they had no way of telling people when the power is going to be restored. If anything like that happens again, it could really be very dangerous because the temperature is so much colder now than it was back in late october and early november. That is the one wild card thats out there. I know that theyve tried to improve and turned it over to national grid, but, again, that is the real question mark we have. As far as the governments themselves, the towns, the counties, the state, the city, theyre up and ready to go, and they will do whatever has to be done. The power is a real question mark. And what about the storm relief that you finally negotiated from the house and senate . Is the money flowing yet . The money will be starting to flow in the next several weeks. I give the Administration Credit because they had 60 days from the time the bill was signed to start the money flow. They actually started approving money within six days. Again, the people on the ground have not seen it yet. I would say over the next several weeks you will see it, but it was disgraceful that it was over 90 days where with katrina it was within ten days. This was inexcusable, and this is what were concerned about is that a major storm would hit during the winter months before rehabilitation work had started. I wanted to ask you in your role as Homeland Security chief, what about this conversation were havin