roger cressy, mike, savannah and andrea mitchell who we're about to hear more from, thank you all. just to recap, we've heard from the top of the management structure in justice and homeland security, if you will, in this country, about an investigation that took 53 hours, 20 minutes from the discovery of a vehicle in times square, not far from where we're speaking right now, until the arrest of this suspect. for those of you joining us on our nbc stations, please join us this evening for nbc nightly news for the sum total of our reporting on this. msnbc live coverage continues right after this with andrea mitchell. >>> continuing here on msnbc, i'm andrea mitchell with roger cressy. let's review the charges briefly as we wrap up here. he is going to be charged according to eric holder, the attorney general, with an act of terrorism, transcending national borders, attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. so we can talk about how this bomb didn't work and it was just -- it is referred to as a weapon of mass destruction. use of a destructive device during the commission of anot

and essentially that al qaeda is not ten feet tall, in mike sheehan's words. so these are the issues that people in this community are talking about now. and he is, again, goes right to the center of each one of them. >> roger,kxç i want to bring up image i believe we just obtained from the department of justice. it's an image of what was in the vehicle that was parked on times square. you see in the rear hatch there the propane tanks as well as the other incendiary device, the fireworks that were near there. back again to this plan. and if a larger organization were helping in this, would we have seen such a crude setup by .r"ual? roger? >> we could have seen a crude seat set up, tamron, but we should have assumed a more effective use of it. the basic stuff, the t&propane canisters weren't turned on. if you're going to ignite the device you want to have some propane going in the vehicle. after all, propane canisters are designed to withstand serious amounts of heat. that's why they're used in barbecues around the country. so there is a lack of thought in ter

i'll talk with congressman mike rogers about how all these agencies worked together. >>> plus, we'll learn more abou9 faisal's potential ties to terrorist groups in pakistan. >>> turning to other news now, engineers for bp oil are trying everything they say they can think of to contain the massive oil spill off the gulf coast. but it may be hitting land. today we got new pictures from gulfport near cat island, mississippi. it shows what appears to be dark pools of oil washing ashore. bp is working on a so-called relief well. the new well is intended to cut off the flow from the damaged well head. the company is also deploys never before used containment domes. today bp's ceo tony hayward told reporters while there are no guarantees, the dome could have the spill under control by early next week. >> reporter: contessa, a lot of the elements here around this oil spill, oil leak is very imprecise. that's why a lot of the officials with bp especially have been hesitant to give out estimates. for now bp is expecting to move what they're calling a 65-ton coffer dam into place over the majo

special agent congressman mike rogers is a republican from michigan, ranking member of the house subcommittee on terrorism, counter-terrorism, and human intelligence. congressman, thanks for joining us. >> peter, thanks for having me. it's an honor to be here. >> you've been critical of the obama administration's effort. you call the attempted bombing an sbl failure. what failed? >> the fact he was able to, a, drape in pakistan, arrive back to the united states, conspire with others to assemble materials for a bomb, obtain a vehicle, assemble the vehicle explosive device, get it to the place where they wanted it to be, and actually initiate the explosion of that device. thank god it didn't go off. but for that, we would have had a major disaster in times square. that part was a failure. the fact that they quickly -- the law enforcement quickly engaged afterward to catch them, we saw some questions to answer there. that part worked fine. the problem is we have to be aggressive to catch him when he's in pakistan when he's getting on a plane from pakistan to the united states, not when he's gett