look at mr. brennan and what he had to say about this. counter-terrorism adviser john brennan said about the president's record in going after al-qaeda. let's watch. >> along with allies and partners, we have been unrelenting. when we assess that al-qaeda of 2012, i think it is fair to say that as a result of our efforts, the united states is more secure and the american people are safer. today it is increasingly clear that compared to 9/11, the core of al-qaeda leadership is a shadow of its former self. al-qaeda has been left with just a handful of capable leaders and operatived. and with continued pressure is on the path to its destruction. >> steve clemens, tell us about that. it's always a dangerous thing to tell us we're safer because anything can happen, but give us your assessment. >> i think what's important to understand is john brennan is one of six people who have met with the president of the united states every morning, keeping a laser focus of this question of what to do with the outstanding terrorists that surround osama bin laden and what was the most significant te

, the president's top counterterrorism adviser, john brennan, defended the controversial program. >> as a matter of international law, the united states is in an armed conflict with al qaeda, the taliban and associated forces, in response to the 9/11 attacks. and we may also use force consistent with our inherent rights of national self-defense. there is nothing in international law that bans the use of remotely piloted aircraft for this purpose or that prohibits us from using lethal force against our enemies, outside of an active battlefield. at least when the country involved can sense or is unable or unwilling to take action against the threat. >> despite that formal acknowledgement of the program, a poorly-kept secret, everyone knows we have one, brennan held back specific details, including the total number of people killed by the strikes and a list of countries where the aircraft are operating and number of civilian casualties. pakistan condemning a u.s. drone attack on a suspected militant compound that killed at least three alleged terrorists, pakistani officials have recently d

happened here john brennan, who is mentioned in the story, the lead adviser on counterterrorism, operated in the bush administration as well, he's a professional, and on the key questions of how to troy al qaeda, he was playing a crucial role in the past administration at the cia. he's now the decisionmaker in this administration. he makes recommendations to the president and as far as i can tell in 10,000 words there is no indication the president disagreed with mr. brennan. the point here is the continuity is in the form of mr. brennan, who is a professional, disagree or agree with him, and on the main points how to destroy al qaeda through drones, through rendition, if necessary, mr. brennan's views seem to be ones the president is comfortable with despite the fact that guantanamo is still open which is something he wanted to close. >> the president is a pragmatist. i was surprised at level of rolfment lookirolf me involvement of kill lists, who is staying, who's going. >> brennan makes the recommendation. despite 10,000 words there's no evidence they said, no, i disagree with you, we'

the american public. >> that was white house chief counterterrorism advisor john brennan speaking on "the today" show this morning. brennan would not say whether the would-be suicide bomber is in custody or dead. nbc news justice correspondent pete williams, who has been covering this story for us, joins us now from washington. pete, good to see you. >> good to see you. i think the reason the white house doesn't want to get into this is because it was an intelligence coo. there was a source inside yemen where the bomb was built. that source eventually left yem within the bomb. there are indications the source was the suicide bomber himself. although, we don't know that for certain. in any event, a remarkable story. pass for the device w the u.s. has had it for about a week. it's at the fbi crime lab just outside washington in virginia. fundamentally, it's basically the same thing has was used in 2009 by the man who tried to bomb a plane coming into detroit. it had no metal parts. neither did that one in 2009. in terms of security challenge at the airport, it doesn't present anything

harder to vote and harder to register to vote. according to the folks at the brennan center for justice, michael waldman was here from that group last night. they're a promotes voting rights. according to the brennan center, at least 180 bills to restrict voting rights have been introduced in state legislatures since the beginning of last year. 180?! 14 states have passed new restrictive voting laws that could have an impact on this year's 2012 election. these 14 states account for about 70% of the total electoral votes needed to win the presidency. texas, kansas, wisconsin, tennessee, mississippi, alabama, south carolina, and pennsylvania have all passed new requirements to show new documentation that you never had to show before in order to vote now. documentation that hundreds of thousands of state residents do not have. there are new restrictions on early and absentee voting. in ohio and in west virginia and in tennessee, in georgia, in florida. what's the matter with early voting and absentee voting? don't know! maybe it makes voting too easy? but these states are cracking down on

john brennan, his top counterterrorism official. he directed homeland security and law enforcement and intelligence agencies to take whatever steps were necessary. i am told separately that we were working very closely with saudi intelligence on this, because this man al asiri who was the master designer of bombs and still is at loose we believe in yemen had also designed the bomb that did successfully explode. it was an attempted assassination in 2009 against a top saudi official, the son of prince nayyaf, the interior minister, who is himself a top counterterrorism official. he was injured in that attempted assassination in jeddah, saudi arabia. so you had three known instances where al asiri did design bombs. one was the cartridge bombs that pete williams pointed out. the other, of course, was the underwear bomber in 2009. and then the successful attempt -- the attempted assassination that did blow up against this saudi official. one other thing, saudi official, saudi intelligence reportedly cooperated with the u.s., chris, in trying to find this suicide bomber and actually find the

go after a terrorist target. do you think that was appropriate? john brennan said he did this because the president wanted to be more transparent. do you think this was the right call given your experience in the bush administration? >> here is what i'm uneasy with. i'm uneasy with sort of a partial release of a lot of information. so i personally do not think providing this information is prudent. i think -- i have spoken to a number of security experts who think releasing this information can be compromising. i am also concerned about if you see some of the memos released in the last week in the leadup to the anniversary of the bin laden assassination. incomplete information in a way that is not really about advancing our security interests. >> given the larger conversation and the criticism that the u.s. has been given on predator drones do you think it was about time for the government to acknowledge it? >> i do not. >> all right. chief romney foreign policy advisor. nice to talk with you. >> good to be with you. >>> is this senator dick lugar's last week in american polit

, and certainly part of it is the response to 9/11, the al qaeda question, but this week, john brennan, the assistant to the president for homeland security and counter terrorism was also talking about the question of drone attacks, which in pakistan, for which afghanistan is obviously critically strategic, so take a listen to brennan. >> so let me say it as simply as i can. yes, in full accordance with the law and in order to prevent terrorist attacks on the s tos states and to save american live lives the united states government conducts targeted strikes against specific al quaid terrorists and sometimes using remotely piloted aircraft often referred publicly as drones. i'm here today, because president obama has instructed us to be more open with the american people about these efforts. >> okay. general clark, that is -- it is as straight forward as you can imagine, the president's spokeman saying we are using drones here, and the president instructed him to tell the american people about it, and will drone attacks become an issue in the con exthet of tkoc campaign this is. >> no s

acknowledged it like this before. in the speech today counterterrorism director john brennan argues that drone strikes are legal. he explains the process that leads to a drone strike and he says the obama administration does not think there's a legal reason to pretend these aren't happening anymore when everyone plainly knows that they are happening. interestingly, john brennan said drone strikes are legal against al qaeda specifically because we're at war with al qaeda specifically which does raise the question of whether the administration thinks it would not be legal to use drone strikes to kill some other kind of bad guy who wasn't in al qaeda. >> yes, war is hell. it is awful. it involves human beings killing of human beings, sometimes innocent civilians. that's why we despise war. that's why we want this war against al qaeda to be over as soon as possible and not a moment longer. over time as al qaeda fades into history and as our partners grow stronger, i do hope that the united states would have to rely less on lethal force to keep our country safe. until that happens, as pr

writer morgan brennan. >> thank you for having me on. >> i'm glad you're here. i want to get your take on the jpmorgan chase story, do customers need to worry? and what does this mean for the economy overall? >> going back to the days of lehman several years ago, the idea of the big bank collapse, i don't think we have to worry and go there just yet. $2 billion is a lot more americans in general, but it is not a lot for this bank, even if the loss get larger. jamie dimon is saying right now the company this quarter will still have a $4 billion profit. so we saw -- that being said, stocks did tumble this week. we saw the s&p 500 at two-month lows on the close. and we saw big bank stocks stop down 9% today. the biggest question is whether financial regulations are actually working, whether they need to be enforced, whether they need to be made tighter. i think there's a lot of questions still out there. >> now to consumer sentiment at a four-year high, how much can we use this as a positive signal for the economy? >> so consumer sentiment, consumer spending in general is 70% of gdp. any tim

. >> nbc's richard engel reporting for us. white house counterterrorism adviser john brennan called yemen's president yesterday to reaffirm their partnership for the fight against militants. >>> business news, facebook's debut not going as the company hoped it would after barely closing in the black friday, shares of the social networking giant dropped 11% yesterday from its $38 starting price down yesterday to 34 bucks. at least 11 billion of the company's paper value had been wiped out. mark zuckerberg personally took a $2 billion hit. some analysts suggest too many shares were initially offered while others point to the high price and concerns over revenue growth also some of those early problems on friday with nasdaq but when you look at what happened yesterday with no technical glitches something is going on and a lot of people say 38 bucks was just too high for facebook. >>> former rutgers university student will spend about a month in prison for his role in harassment of his roommate tyler clementi who committed suicide. the 20-year-old had been convicted of invasion of priva

brennan, yesterday, to confirm the existence of what had been a covert policy of the drone strikes? >> reporter: you know, the drone issue here has been one of great sensitivity and a lot of interest over last few years, particularly as their use has increased in recent years. there was a lot of reaction to the drone strike a few days ago, mixed reaction, and the admission by john brennan that the u.s. was engaging in these activities was received here in the news, i mean it was played out in the news media, covered quite widely but it wasn't a surprise to anyone here. the drone issue has been a real part of the dialogue at all levels, the public level and the official level ford quite some time now. there's a lot of anger towards the u.s. on that issue alone. >> amna nawaz, terrific to have such deep reporting. reporting from islamabad and today from abod ta bod. thank you for being with us. >>> michael leighter served to both president bush and obama. he was in the situation room that night with the president, the top national security team, monitoring the operation in real-time,

? spending on mom and on the way down. joining me now, morgan brennan. welcome back. >> hi. >> back to consumer sentiment. at a four-year high. how much can we use this as a positive signal overall for the economy? >> consumer confidence levels are at the highest level we've seen since january 2008. it's good news because the gdp says consumer spending in general is 70% of our gdp. anytime consumers spend, that's good news. it's positive news. and we're seeing this the most with higher income americans. people earning $75,000 or more are planning to go out and spend on furniture, spend on electronics, things of that nature. whether we can sustain that and whether that spending will materialize will come down to jobs and income and what we see with that in the next couple of months. >> sounds like people are spending more money on moms tomorrow. what's the takeaway from that? how do you read it? >> moms are going to feel the love, at least they're going to feel the gift this is weekend. looking at about $18.6 billion to be spent this weekend on mothers. that munumber is actually up.

ainten a free pass froe democratic base on the counterterrorism poll sy. john brennan, yesterday, talking about the use of drones. let's play that sound and talking to civilian casualties in the drone strikes. >> there is nothing in international law that bans the use of remotely piloted aircraft for this purpose or that prohibits us from using lethal force against our enmes outside of an active battlefield. at least when the country involv involved consents or is unwilling or unable to tack action against the threat. >> he went tonight say war is awful, it involves human beings killing other human beings, sometimes civilians. >> it comes down to a question what is an innocent civilian. as you know, in a war like we're fighting in afghanistan, and an insurgent can be a farm, a schoolboy, can go back and forth between planting an i.e.d., going to school, tilling his fileds, the notion of uniformed salaried regular troops done hold at all in afghanistan. i question whenever anyone starts saying these are innocent civilians or civilianed killed we don't really know. one of the thing

brennan's speech about drone warfare. he talked consistently and specifically about al qaeda, al qaeda, al qaeda. not that this is tactic that we used but that the united states reserves specific tactics against al qaeda in a way that represents a real focus. is that different than the bush administration? >> i think what is interesting is the frame you had of president bush is he didn't spend much time speaking about him? his deputy national security advisor, his now security advisor and his adviser, part of that every day meeting is focused on very laser like focus on where are we at in rolling up the al qaeda network? where are we at the counter terrorism challenges? it's a remarkable focus of the president of the united states on a daily basis that most americans don't know about, hasn't been much written about. it's been part of the real big sea change from the bush administration. one of real problems we've had with al qaeda is it metastasized around the world. more than allowing him to escape, let all the trails go dry. i remember talking to senior cia who often asked me t

generally who is being targeted here, yogi? brennan didn't want to go into detail, but what do we know about those kill lists? >> it's a good question. to go back briefly to bob's point, it's not that the number of drone strikes have decreased but the rules about them havelessened and loosened considerably. you had john brenan yesterday talk about one of the more controversial aspects of this, which is the president's decision to order the deaths of american citizens abroad. there was an al qaeda propagandist who was killed in a drone strike. >> and his son, as well. >> exactly, and his son as well. and neither soft those were discussed in any way. there was no allusion to killing u.s. citizens but there was no discussion about killing a propagandist and his son who was in control of these types of terror attacks. >> u.s. officials have said they're very careful. about 10% of the drone strikes kill unintended targets, i.e., civilians. again, beyond those leaders, do we know anything about who they're targeting, who are on the kill list? >> what i was told a few years ago is they had mo

. >> makes sense, morgan brennan, thank you very much. >>> will facebook stock eventually live up to the hype? you can send me a tweet and i'll answer them throughout the day. >>> new photos in the trayvon martin case. and could a triple-crown winner be in the works? we'll look at it here on "weekends with alex witt." ♪ for three hours a week, i'm a coach. but when i was diagnosed with prostate cancer... i needed a coach. our doctor was great, but with so many tough decisions i felt lost. unitedhealthcare offered us a specially trained rn who helped us weigh and understand all our options. for me cancer was as scary as a fastball is to some of these kids. but my coach had hit that pitch before. turning data into useful answers. we're 78,000 people looking out for 70 million americans. that's health in numbers. unitedhealthcare. my high school science teacher made me what i am today. our science teacher helped us build it. ♪ now i'm a geologist at chevron, and i get to help science teachers. it has four servo motors and a wireless microcontroller. over the last three years we've put n

government in the fight against al qaeda. the president's counterterrorism adviser john brennan met with yemen's president yesterday in that country's capital. it came just a day after an american air strike reportedly killed 11 militants there. >> boy, you read that stuff in "the times" yesterday? those yemeni people are sticking bombs inside of themselves. it's scary. scary, scary, scary. >>y the "wall street journal." california governor jerry brown will be releasing his revised budget for the coming year as the state's projected deficit balloons to $16 billion. >> good lord. >> come on, jerry. >> that's not right. >> the governor is pushing a measure -- this is a shock -- to raise taxes. and says if it doesn't pass, funding for schools and public safety agencies will face even deeper cuts. who would have ever guessed? jerry brown were elected governor of california, that their taxes would rise even more. i never saw that coming. >>> from "the new york post," after 12 years, a janitor at colombia university can now say he has graduated from the ivy league school with honors. the