[ applause ] >> let us pray. god's grace and mercy and protection, we commit ourselves. inspired by the actions of sergeant kyle white, strengthened by divine providence, we go our way in peace. it would be good courage, we hold fast to that which is good unto no evil, no one evil for evil. rather that we would be strengthened in the sane-hearted and we support the weak. we help the wounded and honor all persons. the blessing of god be with us this day, we pray if his holy name, amen. >> amen. >> that concludes the ceremony, but not the celebration. i hear the food here is pretty good, and the drinks are free. who gave a big shout on that? i heard somebody. i hope all of you enjoy the hospitality of the white house. i hope we all remember once again those who are fallen. we are grateful to the families who are here, and to kyle and all who serve in america's armed forces, we want you to know that we will always be grateful for your extraordinary service to our country. thank you very much, everybody. have a great afternoon. [ applause ] >> we are in "the cycle" and right now at the white house president obama just presented sergeant kyle white with the medal of honor for gallantry. white is the seventh living recipient to be awarded the nation's highest military honor for actions in iraq or afghanistan. he was part of the 14 member team of u.s. and afghan national army soldiers that was ambushed by the taliban in eastern afghanistan on november 9, 2007. this was white standing on the trail's cliff just moments before the attack. a 20-hour battle ensued. early on white was knocked down by an rpg. when he regained consciousness, ten members of his 14 member platoon had been forced to slide down a 150 foot cliff under enemy fire. he was unable to help them, but sergeant white saw specialist kain schilling bleeding from his arm. together they found cover where white stopped the bleeding, saving schilling's life. then he saw phillip bocks wuned. he survived a hail of bullets four times using himself as a decoy in order to drag bocks to safety. unfortunately, bocks would not survive. white then spotted his platoon leader lieutenant matthew ferrara lying face down and motionless. white crawled through enemy fire to reach him only to realize his leader was dead. white then returned to schilling's side and radioed for help. u.s. forces then used mortars, artillery, and air strikes to hold off the taliban. white suffered another concussion then after nightfall. he helped land the medivac and refused to leave until all were evacuated. five soldiers and one marine were killed, but white says that day america gained six heroes. comrades he told jim miklawieski, he will never forget. s. >> when you are in that situation, you have these people that you care about that, you served with like your brothers, and they're wounded and they're hurt, and they need your help. you're not fwog stop at anything until you get them that help. orrure going to die trying. >> you can insert yourself back into that battle. doing that, do you see a hero? >> no. i don't. to me the heroes are the guys i wear on my bracelet. these are the guys that are the heros in my book. i was just somebody on the trail that day. >> so humble. retired from the army in 2011 and went to the university of north carolina at charlotte on the gi bill, and he now works as an investigate analyst. he still suffers ptsd and is working to help his fellow vets get the help that they need. let's bring in msnbc military analyst colonel jack jacobs. the medal of honor recipient himself and iraq war veteran major john for the latests, chairman of vote vets.org. thank you for joining us. colonel, i was hoping you could speak to that moment of receiving from the president the medal of honor and kyle white talks a little bit about how there's a mixture of emotions, because on the one hand, it's an incredible honor, and you are standing by the president, and you get a tour of the white house. on the other hand, it was a horrible and tragic moment that brought you there to start with. >> yeah. usually people don't get awards of any kind, medal of honor or anything else, in circumstances that are just peachy. usually things are bad and getting worse and that's when people rise to the top. we were talking about this just a few seconds ago. think about all the people who performed valiantly and nobody saw it or people saw it and they were killed. there was nobody around to record what happened. you realize that everybody, all right sippents, will tell you the same thing that we wear the award not for ourselves, but for all those who can't. there's a recipient from iwo jima named woody williams, a marine, who says that the medal is not his. he just holds it in trust. that's the way all of us feel. >> john, you were in combat in iraq. talk about what -- why some men and women are so valorous in war and override the self-preservation instinct and fight for other's survival while, you know, accepting the almost certainty of death. >> well, i think he talked about it with jim. i think sometimes there's a certain overwhelming responsibility you feel for the people that you are with. something i'm sort of explained to people, it took me less than 24 hours in iraq to get shot at, and, you know, my second tour there was a couple, you know, tough spots where you are getting hit with rockets real good, but your body does something and for some reason it has some ability to calm you down. it's a chemical that is induced, and i think in his situation, it was probably a combination of his friends, people he had served with, and, you know, these guys are trained to know to to do the right thing. i think what makes the story so miraculous is he was someone who was a lower enlisted member, and the things that he did in the president's citation calling in medivacs and air support, applying first aid, being an rt on the radio. he was really doing skills that were expected of a much higher noncommissioned officer, higher ranking noncommissioned officer. i think that's what is so tremendous is his ability to step up in that moment under fire and do things that weren't not expected in that scenario. >> can you tell us a little bit about what the process looks like for looking back into actions like this and identifying honorees for the medal of honor. these aren't conditions that are easy to record what happened. how do they go back and figure out what happened in these situations? >> well, any time there's an action, if one is recommended for an award, it has to go up through the chain of command, and for the medal of honor and other similar awards, it has to be thoroughly investigated and you have to get witness statements and verified and it gets investigated again and so on. any time along the way they can eliminate it from consideration, but from time to time there are relook forwards which go back over all the way back to when the modern era of the use of the medal of honor back to 1918. matter of fact, during the clinton administration it went back and looked all the way back to the civil war where the medal of honor was first devise and go over the books again to see whether or not they missed somebody who should have been awarded the medal of honor who got a lesser award or who got no award at all. nowadays it's lots easier to check than it was back in the civil war because now you've got communication is a lot better, but they're constantly looking at the record and evaluating the circumstances. >> i love your point. you know, there are so many heroes that we just don't even know about, and it's something that speaks vomdz. he said i knew if the roles were reverse and it was you that was sitting out there, you know your battle buddy would come and get you. i mean, that is describes exactly what so many people feel. i want to ask you, colonel jacobs, about the community. he will be number 78 of the living recipients of the medal of honor. you are a part of it as well. talk to us about what that means. it almost sounds like a fraternity of sorts where you guys get together every once in a while. you guys are all friends. what is that like? >> it's kind of mind-boggling because you're in the room with people who are your heroes who are haas hold names. when i was decorated, at my table the first dinner i attended was eddie rickenbacher and jimmy dolittle came and put his arm around my shoulder and explaining how would i have to behave myself for the rest of my life. joe foss, who eventually wound up being the governor of south dakota and pappy bowington. people who were household mamz. it's awe-inspiring to be among them, and you feel like you're outside looking in, but you are one of them. we talked about this earlier too. i was decorated, and there were 400 living recipients. almost 400. today there are 78. we're a waning asset. it's important -- we think it's important that we get out there and talk about the kids, about service and sacrifice, patriotism. the sense of community that you must have in order to survive as an individual and as a group and the kinds of things that -- the kind of love that develops among comrades in the cruise bell of war is exactly that kind of love. we want kids to have in their communities. the central responsibility that we have for each other. that's what we want kids to have in their communities, and that's the only way we're all going to survive. >> john, that is exactly the messable. we do want to send to the younger generation. i think when americans see folks wearing the uniform, they associate all those values that the colonel just talked about with the men and women who wear that uniform. i want to go back to the point that the colonel made about when he got the medal of honor, there were 400 living medal of honor recipients, and now there are 78. is there something different about the nature of the combat that we saw, that you saw in iraq and afghanistan that would lead to fewer men and women getting the medal of honor versus the nature of the combat in vietnam and world war ii? >> there's two big issues here. first, i've only met in my lifetime two medal of honor winners. one is jack jacobs, and the other is bob kerry. they're few and far between. that was a time when more people were in service to the country and the wars were larger. we have less people serving in this wlikt. more importantly, the four who received the medal of honor in iraq, they all died. the combat in iraq is a little different than what this battle was like in afghanistan. a lot of ied, a lot of combat on the roads. there were some major battles in fallujah, but the megdz of honors are coming out of the northeastern area in afghanistan. the kunar area. obviously, this is a battalion that had -- the first medal of honor, living resip yebt of iraq in afghanistan received it here. in this region in afghanistan we saw a certain type of combat that was more consistent with prior wars. a lot of small arms fire with ak-47s and rpg type attacks. we didn't see that as much many n iraq. there's also the issue of just why aren't there more, and have we missed something here? we've seen a sort of commitment from the obama administration to take a closer look. most of these nominations have come in this last administration, and they're really looking hard at did we miss something? sergeant junta was in afghanistan the exact same time, and he received his megdz of honor years earlier. sometimes it takes a while for the process to go through, and we're always looking at did we miss something? i think, you know, obviously it's important for our community and important for the medal of honor society to make sure we have acknowledged everyone who sacrificed. >> john, kyle white is also a success story in terms of his reintegration into society despite suffering from ptsd. he went to school on the gi bill. he has a good job. down in charlotte working for a bank there. what can we take from his story to help other veterans be able to make that transition back into civilian life? >> well, i think most importantly, everyone looks at him with a tremendous amount of respect. it doesn't matter your rank. it doesn't matter how old you are, young you are. everyone who receives this medal, this honor is, you know, really looked upon with tremendous respect inside the armed forces, and his ability to come out and talk about ptsd and saying, hey, i am going through something right now, that's very important. a lot of people feel afraid to talk about it. here you have someone who is in tremendous combat in after stab, in the 173rd airborne brigade, in one of the most decorated units of the war. for him to talk about this and reintegrate and be a success story, it gives others the confidence to say, maybe i'm not okay, and it's okay to get some help. >> john earlier brought up something that's worth repeating and making an extrap las vegas. kyle was 20 years old, and he was in the middle of the most difficult circumstance anybody who is not just 20 years old, but who is two or three times that age could ever think of being in, and, yet, performed not just valiantly, but in a clear-headed way, and the point here is that there's nothing like military service that gives young people authority and responsibility at an early age, and when we talk about giving jobs to veterans, when you say it sometime as if what we really need to do is give a job to veterans -- give jobs to veterans because they need our support and they need our charity. nonsense. they are the best people you can find anywhere. you have a 20-year-old kid that takes charge of the situation and does a fantastic job. there are lots of -- there are hundreds of thousands of young people who are -- who have that same kind of capability. knee had authority and responsibility much greater than the people would otherwise hire them. hiring vets is not charity. it's getting the best people you possibly can. >> that is such a good point. have i two brothers that are just embarking on this junior where iy, and it scares me to death when they have to transition back home because there are so many challenges, and it leads me to the whole conversation about the accusations against the v.a. colonel, i would love your thoughts about that before we let you go. i mean, there are reports that 40 people lost their lives, that people were just put on the waiting list. we know that it is underfunded and we know we're not pouring in enough resources to helping our brave men and women when they get home. did this surprise you? >> no, because i think that the v.a., as hard as is works to do what it's supposed to do, is just not qualified or structured in order to do what we need to have it do, and that's to provide timely first class medical care. the people who served us, if i want to go to the doctor, i call up the doctor and go to the doctor. the doctor treats me and sends a note to the government, the government sends them a check. i think the v.a. medical establishment has outlived its usefulness. i think we would be much better off if we shut it up the way medicare is set up. the government owes a response -- the people of the united states owes a responsibilities to people who serve in uniform and fought and defended this country to give them the best medical care they possibly can. it doesn't have to be done through the cumbersome bureaucratic organization, which is uniquely disqualified. their hearts where in the right place. i know the general very well. i've known him for 40 years. he is doing a fantastic job actually improving the situation. you think it's bad now. take a look at the way it was two years ago. it was much, much worse. >> does he need to resign? >> i think he will not resign unless the president asks him to. the problem is not rick. the problem is the v.a. it is not -- this is not the way in which we should deliver medical care to our men and women who served us in uniform? >> john, do you agree with that assessment? >> well, i think what i do agree with is that general should not resign right now. he is someone who has tried to bring change into the organization. is he cracking down on these waiting lists and these wait times and i think, you know, there's accusations of book cooking. our organization, our members obviously support the thorough investigatings. we want to see how he testifies in front of congress, but if there's nothing that links him to what these accusations are, there's no reason he should resign. i view -- i have served under general. he was the chief of staff of the army when i was in dive duty. he is an honorable man with tremendous integrity. efforts right about the iraq wash. i trust hi judgment. we'll see how this investigation comes out, but there's obviously problems there, but it's what he inherited. he has taken a terrible situation and he has improved it. it's not where it needs to be. >> absolutely. >> i'll tell you one other thing he has done, by the way, and which caused one of the problems in the first place is his heart was in the right place. he said when he first took over, anybody with pts or anybody who has been affected by agent orange, we're going to treat you, and then you had an enormous number of people signing up. didn't prepare his organization for the administrative and logistical load, but has greatly improved it since then. he has done a masterful job. we can discuss at another time whether another bureaucracy is the right way to go? there's no doubt about the fact that our men and women who have served us need the best possible care we can give them. >> everybody can certainly agree with that. colonel jack jacobs and john, so great having you both here. thank you for bringing your perspective. there is much more ahead, including a new gop hillary theory here to see karl rove and an unprecedented look inside the government's spying apparatus. the cycle rolls on for tuesday, may 13th. eating right, she got me drinking boost. it's got a great taste, and it helps give me the nutrition i was missing. helping me stay more like me. 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[ female announcer ] stay strong, stay active with boost. grandpa! grossemisconduct... ortho crime files. ...disturbing the pantry. a house, under siege. homeowner calls in the big guns. say helto home defense max. with the one-touch continuous-spray wand. kills bugs inside... ...and prevents new ones for up to a year. guaranteed. nothing to see here people. ortho home defense max. get order. get ortho®. how did this comment come up suggesting hillary clinton may suffer from brain damage? where did that come from? >> no, no, no. wait. wait a minute. no, no. i didn't say she had brain damage. she had a serious health episode. >> it quotes you as saying 30 days in the hospital? when she -- >> she's wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury. is that -- our research says she was in the hospital for three days and i'm just trying to figure out. >> well, she goes in on a sunday. >> i wonder if the accuracy was there. >> she goes in on a sunday and comes out on a wednesday. this is a 30-day period where she's fighting something. she rides back with a virus on the 7th from the czech republic. on the 10th they announce that she is postponing a trip to the middle east. that's a monday. on a tuesday they mouns she's cancelling it. it is on the following saturday that they announce that sometime during that week she's gotten so dehydrated she's fallen and hit her head. >> that was karl rove on fox news this morning walking back his reported comments about hillary clinton's brain clot that she suffered back in december of 2012. the new york post reported this morning that at a private conference last week rove repeatedly brought up clinton's health saying "30 days in the hospital? and when she reappears she's wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury. we need to know what is up with that." now clinton spokesman fired back accusing rove of deceiving the country for years and adding that there were no words for "this level of lying." the presidential election still two and a half years away, and no candidate is even officially in the ring. it seems the mudsliding has already begun. let's bring in someone who is always above the fray, friend of the show and editorial director at the huffington post, howard fineman. i have always been a bit suspicious about those glasses of yours. >> really? >> no ooshgs i'm -- not really. >> no, not at all. >> it's always good to have you, though, howard. here's what i would say. karl rove is in a position now to say and do whatever he wants because at this point in his career, he really has nothing to lose. i mean, after 2012 all credibility in my opinion was pretty much lost. if are you rove, why not throw out the craziest stuff out there about someone who continues to be the biggest threat really to any republican nominee and hope that something sticks? >> well, i think you're understating a little bit, abby, karl rove's continuing importance. i mean, he is still a player big-time. american crossroads was a big player in the north carolina republican primary race. karl still has a lot of people who are willing to give him money for his political exploits. he is close to a lot of people in the business. he says things like this and does nasty things all the time, but still manages to be a player in the republican party. he is not some coock off in the corner. this is part and parcel of the republican game plan, the conservative game plan, going all the way from rand paul and rush limbaugh and karl rove and on and on and on to start the clock ticking on the hillary campaign even if she doesn't want to, to try to tear her down at what she might regard as one of her strongest points, which is her tenure as secretary of state, to raise questions about her credibility. i mean, for karl rove, he thinks this is a no lose strategy. either she was sicker than we know or she was faking it so she didn't have to testify on benghazi. this is all tied up with conspiracy theories about hillary rodham clinton sxhilg what happened in benghazi, which plays right into the conservative paranoia that really is fueling the republican party right now. >> part of the playbook is to make the process so disgusting that a lot of people will say i don't want to have anything to do with, it i'm going to stay home, which, of course, advantages the republicans. jay carney had to respond to this today. nice smackdown, though, of karl rove. >> dr. rove might have been the last person in america on election night to recognize and acknowledge that the president had won re-election, including the state of ohio. we'll leave it at that. >> always love to hear him throwing shade, but obviously is he jokes because, as we've said already, karl rove is actually really brilliant, and a great political strategist, and here just by introducing this and now folks like us are going to have a conversation about how dumb it is, but we're still advancing it, and this sort of smear mongering is what karl rove has done throughout his career. when they were running for governor, he talked about maybe ann richards, the governor then of texas was gay. when they were running for president against john mccain, he talked about john mccain, maybe he has mental health issues as well as saying he has -- maybe he has a mixed race child out of wed lock. you know, when they were running against john kerry, like maybe he was not as valorous in vietnam as you are led to believe. is this, howard, good sort of wizard brain campaigning, or is this sort of like low blow, dirty politics that just corrodes the system? because it consistently works. they won all those races. >> i'm afraid to say after we watch at the beginning of your show one of the more noble aspects of american public life, service and valor and awarding of a medal of honor, we go all the way from that to this, and to answer your question, yeah. lizard brain tactics work in american politics. they did the same thing with john kerry in the sense that they attacked in some ways what was his strongest point, which was his service. it became controversial. it was a strong point about john kerry. he did go. he didn't do what some other people like, say, george w. bush did, and skirt around the edges of military service. that's what this is all about. they're going to try to put together benghazi and the health questions and everything else together to say, number one, hillary is soft on islam. you know, that's going to be one of the attacks. she didn't do the thing on boca har am. she didn't do that. that's going to be one of the means, as you say. another one is going to be that she doesn't tell the full story, that she's just another clinton who doesn't really tell the full story. >> well, and howard -- >> they're going to go after that. they're just going to go after it and pound it and pound it, and hillary has a strategic decision to make here. she's trying to stay above the fray and out of the race. does she respond or not? you know, because another rule in politics is, you know, iffure not responding, you're losing. >> yeah. she has to. >> i saw the sort of roots of another potential strategy here and karl rove responds interview today. let's take a listen. >> my point is i won't be the doctor sitting on the "new york times" board that's going to want to examine all of their health records. this is going to be an issue. that's one of the two points i want to make. this is going to be an issue. they would be better off sort of saying at the time that it happened, here's everything. here's your doctor. go exhaust yourself talking to the doctor. he will tell you what the follow-up is going to be, how long she's going to have these glasses, what the ramifications of this are, et cetera. they're going to have to do that in 2016 if she's a candidate. my other point is a more personal one. i bet you she's -- this is a part of her calculation. when you go through a health incident like this, any presidential candidate, any presidential candidate has to ask himself, am iotology do this for eight years of my life? >> so karl rove there basically calling for hillary's health records. is that going to be the 2016 equivalent of calling for obama's birth certificate? >> that will be part of it. the questions will be limitless. the desire for detail will be endless. the satisfaction of detail acquired will be nonexistent. there's always going to be another secret that hillary is holding back. that's going to be the basic attitude of the republicans as they campaign against the woman, assuming she runs, who has a lifetime in public life, but it's a lifetime that is both public and private because, don't forget, she was first lady. she was a spouse of the president. you know, there are personal details that she's not going to want to talk about. they're going to try to bait her here, and this is also karl rove saying, come on into the ring. we dare you to come into the ring. you know, there's been a lot written recently about how the whole republican strategy is to make this all so distasteful to hillary that she's going to look at it and say wropt to run, it's too dirty, too nasty. first of all, i think that's -- may i say, i think that's vaguely sexist because i don't think you would say that about any man that you are going to scare him out of the race because he is not tough enough. number one. number two, anybody who says that doesn't know hillary. >> dumb strategy. >> dumb strategy. she will -- i think her people are saying, you know, you wait, you wait, you wait until you see the whites of their eyes and you counter attack. the problem is she's got her book coming out. she had a pace that she wanted to run this at. >> she's losing that. >> what rove and those are successfully doing is running a presidential race now. that's something she doesn't want. i'm in the camp that thinks she's running, but she wants to run on her own time, and it's always been a problem with hillary that she wants to dictate the pace of things. that was a problem for her when barack obama came out of nowhere in 2007, and she's got to worry about that again now. >> yeah. howard fineman, excellent commentary as always. thank you for joining us. >> i just got the joke about the glasses. slow-witted. >> we love that about you. >> slow-witted. >> thanks, howard. the newest medal of honor recipient former army sergeant kyle white just walked out of the white house. let's listen in. >> good afternoon. on the surface this is a piece of blue fabric and carved medal. at its core it is a symbol of our nation. a nation forged in war. of the men and women who act heroically and give their all in the nation -- all for the nation and for each other. at its core, it is a symbol of the responsibility all soldiers knowingly face when they depart for distant lands in defense of the nation. a responsibility that locks us all in bonds of brotherhood. the medal of honor is said to be the nation's highest award for valor by one individual. to me it is much more. it is representation of the responsibility we accept as warriors and members of a team. it is a testament to the trust we have in each other and our leaders. because of these reasons, the medal cannot be an individual award. battles are not won by men. if that were true, the taliban would have won on the trail in afghanistan because they had every tactical advantage, including the numbers. battles are won by spirit, and spirit is present in the relationships built from the trusts and sacrifice we share with one another in times of hardship and by that definition cannot be possessed by one person. without the team there could be no megdal of honor. that is why i wear this medal for my team. i also wear a piece of metal around my wrist. it was given to me by another survivor of the 9 november ambush. he wears an identical one. this is maybe even more precious than the medal symbol just placed around my neck. on it auto are the names of my six fallen brothers. they are my heroes. though i am still uncomfortable with hearing my name and the word hero in the same sentence, i am now ready for the next challenge of wearing this blue fabric and carved megts in the same reference that i wear the brace lite, and i vow to live up to the responsibility of doing so. thank you all for allowing me to share this day with you. god bless you, the united states army, and god bless america. >> we'll be right back. passion... became your business. at&t can help simplify how you manage it. so you can focus on what you love most. when everyone and everything works together, business just sings. 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that led to the world we're in now where the nsa seems to have an almost unlimited capacity for spying on all of us. the road from 9/11 to the current nsa is explored in fascinating detail through interviews with a hoard of critical intelligence folks in the new frontline documentary, the united states of secrets which premiers tonight on pbs at 9:00 p.m. investigative filmmaker michael kurt is with us now. michael, the president, the administration, the intelligence community face an unprecedented threat in american history. they try to deal with that. have the ends justified the means? >> well, that's the question you can answer and so can your viewers if they watch the film tonight. it is that level of detail. what actually happened when the president of the united states said i believe i have the authority vested in me that allows me to supersede congress and the courts and really if i'm going to run a country that's in crisis, i need to turn on a dime. i need to do whatever i need to do, and there's some wisdom to that. the question is at what point are you no longer justified doing it without talking to the american people or the congress or the courts about it? it was for four years the darkest, greatest kept sealed off secret that the united states of america has had in a long, long time. many, many people in the bush administration in the congress and at the nsa itself didn't know what they were doing, the extent to which they were doing what they were doing, and where the authorization came from. >> the story of what's going on at the nsa hasn't just been about the story. it's also been about the messengers. edward snowden, obviously, very controversial. zen green wald and his way also controversial. very strong personality in some ways. more activist than journalist. how have those messengers impacted the way people have sort of received this information about the nsa? >> it's a very good question, and it's actually the one that we started with. why snowden? why did he do what he did? why that much paper? why not just two or three items? how did he get it? how did he get into the government? who is snowden? how many more snowdens are there out there working, and he is in that work force of young people. snowden was not a high school graduate. snowden was a computer expert, a guy who really knew how to run it. our government, our country needed people like that to populate the nsa and the cia and other places. there may be many edward snowdens sitting there who watched and read what was going on in secret and said i don't like the way it's going. the country is not talking about it. maybe laws have been broken by the attorney general, the vice president, the vice president's attorney. there are many, many people involved in our story tonight that you watch it, and you think i wonder how dicey things are? well, snowden thought they were very dicey, and he decided nobody was doing anything about it, and he was going to expose it. he wasn't just going to expose a handful of paper. he was going to take the government 1.7 million pages of documents and distribute them to who? not other than mark gellman, not members of the regular press because the morning times, he knew, had held a story in 2004 and for a year the story of the program, which is what we call what happened, what the government created, was not -- was not read, seen, or heard. so the times holds the story. snowden knows that. knows that there may be illegality going on, and he sits there in hawaii and says i'm going to unleash all of this. i'm going to give it to an independent filmmaker. i'm going give it to glen greenwald who doesn't necessarily play by the rules. and glen and bart gellman from the washington post, and i'm going to make sure it doesn't get to the "new york times" because of what they did in 2004. he has given a tremendous amount out there, and i think the real question we have, i have, is how much more is there, and is this just going to be a drip, drip, drip for years, and that changes everything if that's true. >> assuming you highlight in this documentary that the nsa, it beefed up after 9/11 because we realized we were not prepared for the attack, and there were terrorists that we just didn't know about that were running around this country, and that's why they obviously made changes to it, and we haven't had an attack of that scale, of that size since 9/11, but the minute something happens again, hopefully that's never the case, but the mood changes in this country. then the question is why didn't we prevent that? why couldn't we stop that? what is the alternative? >> this is the gun that's held to the head of president obama who came into office as a candidate, promising that he was going to roll back the program. there wasn't going to be as much secrecy. he wasn't going to see whistle blowers indicted. he was -- until he walked into office and was read into it, suddenly i think he realized something we don't know, but what -- you don't have to be a genius to understand that a politician sitting there knowing that if he dials it back, if something happens, he is going to take the fall for it even if he is a constitutional lawyer and a guy who -- >> you do everything you can to protect the people you serve. >> you'll do it, and you worry a lot about it. one can understand it, but one can at some moment realize where the snowden revelations happened. if you are the president of the united states and a federal judge comes along and says it's unconstitutional and in one week the tech people are sitting in your conference room saying we want to know what's going on with google and facebook, and you're sitting there saying wait a minute, and i wonder if it's been effective, and that's the third part of it, which is his own committee went to him and said you know all those phone records, we can't find out that anything has been stopped because of it. >> have you gotten the sense that any of the conversations you had making this movie, you sort of -- we had all these disclosures the last couple of years, a lot of popular outrage and some fairly narrow policy moves around things like mass collection of phone records, but not a broader agenda about an alternative approach to entell in part because there's sort of the sense of what is the alternative? are you seeing people crystallizing something that's clearer about what not to do with this? >> no, i think -- notets. i think that's what happened -- we certainly see the president painted very much into a corner right now. for all the reasons we've talked about. do you want the blood of americans on your hands? if you blow it. or do you want to continue to spy on everybody and grab everything that there is? i think that's the question. hopefully programs like ours and this will cause a debate in america, and something will result that's positive in the future. >> we've been having that debate for years, it seems like, and i think it will continue through the 2016 election. michael, thank you very much. be sure to check it out tonight on your local pbs station. united states of secrets. next week we'll preview part two of the frontline film exploring the secret relationship between the nsa and silicon valley. up next, a very different sort of intrigue for the first time. the battle that revolutionized the video game industry is -- sega versus nintendo. turns out it was a lot like mortal combat. if i can impart one lesson to a new business owner, it would be one thing i've learned is my philosophy is real simple american express open forum is an on-line community, that helps our members connect and share ideas to make smart business decisions. if you mess up, fess up. be your partners best partner. we built it for our members, but it's open for everyone. there's not one way to do something. no details too small. american express open forum. this is what membership is. this is what membership does. whatever happened to good? 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(meowright on cue. it's more than just a meal, it's meow mix mealtime. with wholesome ingredients and irresistible taste, it's the only one cats ask for by name. humans. even when we cross our t's and dot our i's, we still run into problems. namely, other humans. which is why at liberty mutual insurance, auto policies come with new car replacement and accident forgiveness if you qualify. see what else comes standard at libertymutual.com. liberty mutual insurance. responsibility. what's your policy? when folks think about wthey think salmon and energy. but the energy bp produces up here creates something else as well: jobs all over america. engineering and innovation jobs. advanced safety systems & technology. shipping and manufacturing. across the united states, bp supports more than a quarter million jobs. when we set up operation in one part of the country, people in other parts go to work. that's not a coincidence. it's one more part of our commitment to america. where else but in video games can you rescue a princess, speeds through a world collecting gold rings and get a touchdown all in one afternoon? maybe here at the cycle, but nowhere else. mario was an escape for kids in the '90s, rivaled by the coke and pepsi wars the decade before. sega was the upstart looking to drop a turtle shell and others were looking for their cut of the action. console wars takes a look at the epic video game battle. author blake harris interviewed key players. he has a documentary based on his book and will executive produce a feature film based on the book. you are a busy man. >> i am. it's been a lot of fun. i never would have expected that what went on behind the games was more fun than the games themselves. >> you can't just leave us with that. >> the battle that went on, people thought it was a job like working at a video game company. it wasn't work for them. i have been honored to write about it. >> take us behind the scenes. in 1989, we had a nintendo game system, then sega. what brought sega into the home? >> your father brought it into the home. >> i think it was my mother. >> you are not alone. in 1989 or 1990, one in three homes had nintendo. the most popular selling toys, nintendo. they were at the top and dominated. sega tried to compete and failed misrabblely. they came back with the genesis and had a lot of struggles until tom joined the company and they created a new mascot, the sonic hedgehog and things really changed from there. >> the success of tom as a marketer is extraordinary. i find it interesting that these are sort of international companies with japanese culture and american culture existing and often clashing. you talk in the book, tom presenting to the sega board the plan and the japanese board thinking in a japanese cultural way saying no one agrees with you, what you are saying. everyone thinks you are nuts but this is why i hired you. go ahead with your plan. he brings and american aggressive marketing plan and the japanese allow him to go forard and it is successful. >> absolutely. the plan was to bundle the best game, give it for free to go head-to-head against nintendo. it's things the japanese did not want him to do. they gave him their blessing to do so and saga was extremely successful. they surpassed nintendo in less than three years. what separated the two were the game immortal combat. they had hearings on violence in video games. >> talk more about that. obviously sonic and mario, they were games were kids, right? everybody was not playing video games. it was a thing kids do. with mortle combat, others came in. >> it's the maturation of video games from childish things to big business. itis why you see the transformation from boopity bopity games. >> they are the ones i like. >> they hip motize me and hours disappear. it's the story of the transformation into the modern game and larger than life character that is are the pioneers. you mentioned tom. before he got to saga, he has the biggest influence on my life, bigger than any adult except my parents from resurrecting the barbie line to he-man, flintstones vitamins. >> amazing stuff. talk to us about the future of video games. is everyone going to play it on their phones? >> it's changed a lot. they just released recent counsels but the app games are starting to dominate. i dedicated the book to my fiance. if not her, candy crush. that's where my money has been going these past two years. >> thank you so much. that's great. that does it all for "the cycle" today. now with alex wagner is up next. ugh. heartburn. did someone say burn? 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today, governor chris christie's press secretary went before the