Rock Center

Slightly more than half of all people who took Rock Center's mock police photo lineup test were able to identify the correct suspect.

In early April, correspondent Josh Mankiewicz reported on new challenges to the way photo lineups are administered by law enforcement agencies after a series of wrongful convictions were identified. Viewers were then asked to take part in an unscientific test by watching a video of a mock crime taking place and then trying to identify the correct person seen in the video out of six fictional suspects.

Out of 2,499 responses since the Rock Center report was broadcast, 1,347 were correct -- 54 percent -- meaning 46 percent of test takers selected the wrong suspect from the mock police photo lineup.

Counter to the “live lineups” we see on television, in actual crimes more often than not the detective or officer working the case presents the witness with a five or six-person photo lineup. One of the people in the lineup is the actual suspect and the rest are what are referred to as “fillers,” all chosen to roughly resemble the suspect. However, decades of research suggest that this traditional method is flawed. Nationwide, 75 percent of prisoners exonerated by DNA evidence were convicted on the basis of faulty eyewitness identification. As a result some states and law enforcement agencies across the country are beginning to change their procedures.

Click here to watch Josh Mankiewicz's original Rock Center report and take the mock lineup test below.

Rock Center

Benjamin Kieffer started riding a unicycle in 1990 when he signed up for circus school, but now the 30-year-old rides his unicycle to work every day in midtown Manhattan. Kieffer tells Rock Center his commute is the part of the day he enjoys the most. 

Rock Center

Brandi Chastain, the star soccer player who helped the United States win a World Cup, is on a mission to get out a message to young girls playing soccer: the best way to avoid concussions is to sharpen their skills.

A growing number of girls are getting injured from concussions on the soccer field. Some experts have questioned whether the act of heading – when players attempt to use their foreheads to direct the ball – should be removed from youth soccer. Chastain strongly objects to that idea.

“It’s a part of the game and I think it’s an important part and I think it’s a beautiful part of the game, to be honest with you,” she told Rock Center's Kate Snow.  “I would never want to see that go away, but there’s a right way to do it. There’s a protective way to do it.”

Chastain said that along with learning how to properly head a ball, girls need to learn how to create a protective space around their bodies when they play soccer.  In this online exclusive, Chastain demonstrates techniques that can keep young girls safe on the field.

Click here for more of Kate Snow's reporting on the growing concussion crisis in girls' soccer.

By Kate Snow, Sarah Koch, Deirdre Cohen and Jessica Hopper

Rock Center

Fifteen-year-old Allison Kasacavage, once a rising soccer star in Pennsylvania, is slowly recovering after suffering debilitating concussions while playing the game she loved.

“It’s almost like I need a sign on my back saying, ‘My head is broken.’ And you can’t see it. It’s like not visible and it’s like not many people understand, “said Allison in an interview with Rock Center’s Kate Snow.

Allison, who lives with her family in Chester Springs, Pa., has had at least five concussions.  She is only able to attend school four hours a day.  Her room is lit with soft blue light to ease her headaches and her family now eats dinner by candlelight. 

She is one of hundreds of girls across America each year who suffer concussions while playing soccer. 

“People who think of concussions as only being present mostly in guys and mostly in the sport of football are just plain wrong,” said Dr. Bob Cantu, who is chairman of the surgery division and the director of sports medicine at Emerson Hospital in Concord, Mass. “Soccer is right at the top of the list for girls.” 

With the steady popularity of youth soccer, more girls are playing the game than ever before.  Girls make up 48 percent of the more than 3 million kids registered in US Youth Soccer leagues.

Cantu said that the country is in the midst of “a concussion crisis” and that studies show girls are reporting nearly twice as many concussions as boys in the sports they both play.

‘Concussion Crisis’ impacting girls’ soccer

The number of girls suffering concussions in soccer accounts for the second largest amount of all concussions reported by young athletes, according to the American Journal of Sports Medicine.  (Football tops the list.)

“What’s happening in this country is an epidemic of concussions, number one, and the realization that many of these individuals are going to go on to post-concussion syndrome, which can alter their ability to function at a high level for the rest of their lives,” Dr. Cantu said. 

Allison still remembers when she suffered her first serious concussion in October 2008.  It came when she collided with another player on the field. 

“When I like got up, my head was like pounding,” Allison said. “There was, like, a pulse in my head. It was like the strangest thing.  There was a heartbeat in my head and I had no idea what it was and why it was there.  I have never felt that before and I was just so confused,” she said.

Click here for more on concussion symptoms

After Allison had apparently healed from the concussion, she returned to soccer.  She’d been a star player since she was six years old, working her way up to one of the top teams in Pennsylvania.  She said that her identity had been wrapped up in the game and she felt pressure to please her coaches.

Allison said that she was nervous about heading the ball, but continued to do it. 

“If you didn’t head the ball, you were like the weakest link,” Allison said.

When heading, players attempt to use their foreheads to direct the ball, often jumping with opposing players, a move that can lead to collisions between players, bumped heads and strained necks.  Dr. Cantu says that the act of heading is one of the most dangerous parts of soccer because players often collide.

Allison suffered a third concussion in her final season of soccer and another two off the field, the latter because her spatial awareness had been impacted from her previous concussions and she hit her head on a table and other furniture, her mother said.

Her parents said that they knew about the danger of concussions in sports like football, but it wasn’t until Allison had her first serious head injury that they realized what a big problem concussions can be in soccer.

“I think that we were blind to what was going on around us because, yes, it was about the team.  It was about the winning. It was about all the, it was almost like a routine of, like I said, an awful lot of practices and you just went through it and really your lives rolled by with soccer being the most important thing,” said Lex Kasacavage, Allison’s father.

Sports psychologist Richard Ginsburg says that enthusiasm for the game and the kids by parents and coaches, while well-meaning, might be making the concussion crisis worse.

“We get wrapped up,” said Ginsburg, the author of ‘Whose Game is it Anyway?’  “We want success for them and so sometimes we get, we lose perspective.  It doesn’t make us terrible people. It just makes us human. “ 

NBC News

Kimmie Zeffert

In Allison’s town of Chester Springs, about 30 miles from downtown Philadelphia, she is not alone.  She has bonded with at least five other 14 and 15-year-old girls who have suffered concussions while playing soccer.  

“My main friends are actually people that have head injuries,” said one of the teens, Kimmie Zeffert, 14.  “I’ve become so close with them because I can relate to them.  They understand what I’m going through.”

Kimmie had her first concussion when she was 12.

“I took another head ball and then I don’t even remember,” she said. “The next thing is I got, apparently, got elbowed in the back of the head. But (when) the coach asked me if I wanted to come out, I was like, ‘No, I’m going, I’m going to stick it through.”

Those hits -- heading the ball and being elbowed by a player in the head -- ended her soccer career.

Kimmie’s teammate Jenna Rohr made the same choice to continue playing in her game after getting hit in the head.

“I didn’t want to quit,” she said. “I didn’t want to let my team down because, like, so many people already had concussions on the team.”

Both Jenna and Kimmie have been unable to make it through a full day of school for almost two years.  They still suffer from intense headaches, dizziness, nausea and vision problems. 

Along with their physical ailments, several of the girls NBC News spoke to have struggled with depression since leaving soccer. Some have taken anti-depressants. One teen soccer player, who is returning to the sport after suffering a concussion, said that she felt so terrible at one point that she even thought about suicide.

Despite their experiences, the teens still love soccer and say they don’t discourage their former teammates from the sport.

“I think like speaking for all of us, like we would do anything to just be able to play one more game,” Jenna said.

Should heading be banned from girls’ soccer?

Dr. Cantu has made the bold proposal that heading be eliminated from youth soccer under the age of 14.  He said girls, because of their anatomy, may be especially vulnerable to concussions.

“Girls as a group have far weaker necks,” Cantu said.  “The same force delivered to a girl’s head spins the head much more because of the weak neck than it does the guys.”

New research suggests some body types may be more at risk than others.

“We believe that individuals with very long, thin necks may be at greater risk,” Cantu said.

With this evidence, Cantu said, “I would hope it would not only make parents look at their daughters, but make every one of those parents insist their daughters are on a neck strengthening program if they’re playing a collision sport.”

Brandi Chastain, the Olympian who helped the United States win a World Cup, strongly disagrees with Cantu’s proposal to eliminate heading from girls’ soccer.

“It’s a part of the game and I think it’s an important part and I think it’s a beautiful part of the game, to be honest with you,” she said.  “I would never want to see that go away, but there’s a right way to do it. There’s a protective way to do it.”

Chastain said that girls need to be taught to create protective space around their bodies.  She says heading isn’t dangerous if it’s done correctly.

“I circle back to education and preparation and I put that on parents and coaches because the kids don’t know any better,” Chastain added. “You know, they just want to go out there and play, but if we can educate them in a fun environment that’s safe, that teaches them the skill and gives them the confidence to try it and then they can put it into practice in the game.”

Back in Pennsylvania, the girls and their families are trying to educate people based on their own experiences.  Despite their concussions, though, they say they don’t want to discourage girls from playing soccer.

“Please don’t go and not play soccer because it’s such a great opportunity for the girls to just prove themselves and challenge themselves and make friends and travel,” said Wendy Zeffert, mother of Kimmie.  “But be aware.”

Editor's Note: Click here to watch Kate Snow's full report, 'Contact Sport,' that aired on NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams on May 9.

By Jenny Dubin and Ronnie Polidoro
Rock Center

Neville Bardos, the U.S. Equestrian Federation International Horse of the Year, is gearing up for a potential spot on the U.S. Olympic team, a remarkable feat considering less than a year ago the champion horse was fighting for his life after surviving a deadly fire.

“Neville was the highest-placed American horse at the World Championships two years ago,” said Boyd Martin, the horse’s trainer.  But after a fire broke out in Neville’s stable, the 12-year-old chestnut thoroughbred horse with a white muzzle was unrecognizable when he turned black from the smoke and ash.  “The only thing you could see was Neville's two little eyes,” Martin said.

May 30, 2011

The fire happened at night last Memorial Day in a barn which housed 11 horses.  “I remember driving out there and there was just this massive yellow glow in the sky," Martin told Rock Center’s Harry Smith in an interview airing Wednesday, May 9.

“I thought to myself, ‘you know, this is real bad and my life's about to change,’” said Martin, who purchased Neville after he graduated from high school in Australia.

Neville was destined for the slaughterhouse but Martin sensed he was a champion-caliber horse.  The two placed 1st at the Melbourne CCI in 2006, 1st at the Fairhill CCI in 2009, and placed 4th at Kentucky CCI in 2010.

But disaster loomed at the True Prospect Farm in West Grove, PA.  Martin fought his way past the firefighters and raced into the barn.  Through a cloud of heavy smoke, Martin says he found a stable door and remembered hearing a gurgling noise.

Rock Center

Boyd Martin, Neville Bardos, and Harry Smith

“I had my shirt over my head and I remembered running in there and then I could feel, like, a horse cowering up in the corner,” Martin said.

Martin says he put his hands on the horse and felt his collar and dragged him out of the barn just moments before the blazing roof collapsed.

It helped that Neville was wearing a windsucking collar.  It’s a collar that is placed around a horse’s neck to deter him from flexing his neck muscles whenever he tries to suck in air, a habit discouraged in competitive horses.

Before Martin arrived, four horses were pulled from the barn but Neville was the only one Martin himself was able to pull out alive.  While the burns to his flesh were minimal, he had been in the fire for the better part of an hour and suffered severe smoke inhalation.  Neville was in critical condition gasping for his life.

Neville was rushed to the hospital and treated daily in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber in effort to speed his recovery.  His condition improved so rapidly the results seemed miraculous. “You could see the horse every day getting fresher and stronger and more antsy,” said Martin.

After five weeks of recovery, Neville’s veterinarian suggested Martin take him for a walk.  So Martin hopped on and walked him, but the walk turned into a trot and then the trot turned into a canter.

It had always been a dream of Martin’s to compete in England at the Burghley Horse Trials, one of the toughest three-day equestrian competitions in the world, but by the time Neville was on the mend, Martin only had eight weeks to get the horse ready.

Martin says a lot of people said it was a dumb idea to compete with the recovering horse, “But what people didn't understand is how much I knew this horse and what I was feeling every day and what I was reading as the trainer. And I knew before I got to Burghley that this horse was ready to go.”

Martin and Neville finished 7th, an extraordinary performance just three months after the fire.

“It confirmed that me as a person and Neville as a horse can deal with anything now,” Martin said.

The two mates have now set their sights on what would be the ride of their lives competing at the Olympics this summer.  Their fate will be determined when the short list is announced June 17th and the Olympic team is announced July 2nd.

“All I can do is try my very hardest.  And all Neville can do is try his very hardest.  And if it's meant to be I think it's going to happen,” Martin said.

Click here to watch Harry Smith's full report, 'Horse Power,' from NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams. 

Rock Center

In part two of this Hidden Planet episode, Inside the Pharoah's Secret Tunnels, Richard Engel journeys into the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, the oldest of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

The pyramid's construction began in 2589 B.C., shortly after the 20-year-old Pharaoh Cheops ascended to the throne. Cheops' burial place turned out to be the biggest one in history.

Engel climbs through the hidden chambers and passageways of the ancient pyramid, revealing secrets about the largest pyramid of the Giza Necropolis and the pharoah it was constructed for.

Editor's note: New editions of Richard Engel's 'Hidden Planet' premiere monthly on the Rock Center iPad app. Download the app here.

Rock Center

Neville Bardos is a horse that has cheated death not once, but twice. The racehorse was destined for the slaughterhouse until his Australian-turned-American trainer, Boyd Martin, rescued him at the age of three. London 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of equestrian events at the Olympics and the pair are strong contenders to make the United States team. But no one would have believed this possible just a year ago.

Click here to watch Harry Smith's full report, 'Horse Power,' from NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: Nearly a year after Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces, Rock Center with Brian Williams received unprecedented access inside the White House Situation Room. Brian Williams gives a guided tour inside the room where no network television cameras have gone before.

Click here to watch the hour-long Rock Center special: Inside the Situation Room

By Jessica Hopper, Subrata De and Tim Uehlinger
Rock Center

President Barack Obama describes the killing of Osama bin Laden as the “most important single day” of his presidency and said that the decision to carry out the raid was one that he had to ultimately make alone.

“I did choose the risk,” the president said in an exclusive interview with Rock Center Anchor and Managing Editor Brian Williams. “The reason I was willing to make that decision of sending in our SEALs to try to capture or kill bin Laden rather than to take some other options was ultimately because I had 100 percent faith in the Navy SEALs themselves.”

A year after the May 1, 2011, raid on bin Laden’s compound, Obama and several of the advisers who helped plan the operation, known as “Operation Neptune’s Spear,” spoke exclusively to NBC News, reflecting on the tense months spent planning and debating the feasibility of this daring raid. The interviews occurred before the president made an unannounced visit to Kabul on Tuesday, where he and President Hamid Karzai signed an agreement on the future of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.

“This had to be such a close-held operation,” the president said. “There were only a handful of staff in the White House who knew about this.”

The president did not share news of the mission’s launch with his staff, or with the first lady.

“Even a breath of this in the press could have chased bin Laden away,” Obama said. “We didn't know at that point whether there might be underground tunnels coming out of that compound that would allow him to escape.”

The killing of the 9/11 mastermind had been years in the making, a mission that Obama’s two predecessors had been unable accomplish. President Bill Clinton fired 75 cruise missiles trying to kill bin Laden while President George W. Bush was frustrated by the al-Qaeda leader’s ability to evade capture.

The lead
After years of hunting bin Laden, the Central Intelligence Agency got its biggest break in late 2010. 

Helmed by then CIA Director Leon Panetta, the agency identified the home of bin Laden’s courier in the upscale town of Abbottabad, not far from Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. Satellites revealed someone else living at the same compound: a tall man walking in the courtyard that analysts dubbed “The Pacer.”

“Ultimately it was a 50/50 proposition as to whether this was actually bin Laden,” Obama said.

He and his advisers, including Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, hammered out the possibilities.

Clinton said that she was brought into the process in January 2011 when a series of intensive meetings began in the White House Situation Room, or “Sit Room.”

In March of 2011, the president ordered Admiral William McRaven, then commander of Joint Special Operations, to outline a possible raid on the suspected bin Laden compound.

“I remember the moment in the Sit Room with General McRaven,” Clinton said, “and, you know, someone said, ‘Well, this sounds really dangerous and we’re going to expose our guys and what do we know is going to happen?’ And he said, ‘Well, with all due respect, we’ve done this hundreds of times.’”

In fact, the night bin Laden was killed, Special Forces carried out several other missions in the region.

“What may not be known is in addition to this operation that night, this specific one, there were multiple operations just like this going on in Afghanistan,” said retired Admiral Mike Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Some of them actually more difficult than the one that got bin Laden. And when I say more difficult, I don't think higher strategic risk, certainly not more important, but physically more difficult, more dangerous than the one that our great Special Forces executed.”

The dress rehearsal
The plan to raid the compound in Abbottabad developed rapidly and by April 21, 2011, Admiral Mullen attended a dress rehearsal in the Nevada desert.

“When I actually went to the rehearsal and watched it at night at a place where they built a compound just like Abbottabad and watched it in execution, that just gave me great confidence that they could execute this,” Mullen said. 

He met every member of the SEAL Team Six that would ultimately carry out the mission.

“I got to look each of them in the eye.  They showed me in their execution of rehearsal and also in that steely-eyed glare that they give you that they were ready to go,” Mullen said. 

Some of the men weren’t yet aware who they were preparing to attack, but Mullen’s presence signaled that they were going after a high-value target.

“They knew certainly how critical this was. They knew who they were and who they were working with,” he said. “They may not even have known it was bin Laden at that point, but I'm sure they suspected it.”

One week later, it looked like weather conditions in Pakistan would be perfect for the raid — a moonless night with clear skies.  If the raid didn’t happen that night, it could be months before weather conditions would be appropriate again for this high-risk operation.

Making the decision
Armed with the confidence that the Special Forces could carry out the mission, it was decision time. So on Thursday, April 28, 2011, the president gathered his advisers in the Situation Room, located below ground level in the White House.

“There was no consensus,” Biden said.  “The president on the last day got us all down in the Situation Room and he said, ‘Okay, it’s basically a roll call.’”

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recommended an air strike with no forces on the ground.  CIA Director Panetta supported a raid by Special Forces and so did Secretary of State Clinton. Vice President Biden wanted to wait on further proof that bin Laden was indeed in the compound.

“It was never contentious because I think everybody understood both the pros and cons of the action,” Obama said.  “People who were advocating action understood that if this did not work, if we proved to be wrong, there would be severe geopolitical consequences and obviously most importantly, we might be putting our brave Navy SEALs in danger.”

During the meeting, the president never indicated which way he was leaning. After the discussion, he dismissed his team and said he’d have a decision in the morning. He had dinner with his family and then went to his study after his wife and daughters went to bed.

“Well, there is no doubt that you don't sleep as much that evening as you do on a normal night,” the president said. “I stayed up late and I woke up early.”

The next morning, in the Diplomatic Room of the White House, he told his national security advisers that the mission was a go.

“You have some serenity in knowing that you've made the best possible decision that you can and, you know, in that situation you just, you do some praying,” Obama said.

A trio of national security advisers – John Brennan, Tom Donilon and Denis McDonough – had prepared briefing points for the president, but it was clear his mind was made up.

“My recollection is that he said, ‘It’s a go, we’re going to do the assault.  We’re going to do the raid. Complete the orders, let’s go,’” said Donilon.

Keeping the Secret
In order to not raise suspicions, the president and his advisers had to keep up their weekend plans.

Secretary Clinton said she faced an awkward question at a wedding for one of her daughter’s friends. 

“It was so ironic,” she said.  “All these smart young people who work in all kinds of enterprises, one of them came up and said, ‘Do you think we’ll ever get bin Laden?’  I said, ‘I don’t know. I have no way of knowing, but I can tell you this, we’ll keep trying.’”

She also hid the raid from her husband.

“This was such an important secret to keep,” she said. “No one in the State Department knew. “I just felt a personal responsibility to keep it close, but that meant that I was basically, you know, having to consult with myself, to be honest.”

Moments after giving the go-ahead for the raid, the president and the first lady boarded Marine One on a trip to inspect tornado damage in Tuscaloosa, Ala. And on Saturday night – the evening before the raid – he attended the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and chuckled when a joke about bin Laden was made by comedian Seth Meyers.

“That was a little bit of acting going on there because my mind was elsewhere,” he said.

National Security Advisor Donilon said that when he left the White House Correspondents’ Dinner early, a reporter asked why he was leaving before the event concluded.

“I got this thing tomorrow,” Donilon said as offhandedly as he could.

The raid
On Sunday, May 1, 2011, the president’s advisers gathered in the Situation Room at around 11 a.m.  Half a world away, the SEAL team waited for nightfall.

So as not to arouse suspicion that a major gathering was under way in the West Wing, the team ordered pizza from several different places and also sent someone to Costco to get food.

The president played nine holes of golf at Andrews Air Force Base before heading to the Situation Room at around 2 p.m.

“It is one of those rare moments when you know that the man you’re watching is putting everything on the line,” Biden said. “Everything on the line. Not only risking the lives of these incredible, incredible warriors, but also knowing that if he’s wrong about this man, he’s going to pay a very, very high price for it.”

At around 2:30 p.m., word arrived that the first wave of helicopters had left Jalalabad, Afghanistan, for Abbottabad with Navy SEALs, a Pakistani-American translator and a service dog named Cairo. At the president’s request, two Chinook helicopters stayed close by with additional SEALs as backup.

“They were accustomed to operating in the dark,” Obama said. “They were accustomed to landing in the compounds where they weren’t sure what was behind closed doors. These guys were all trained to do that.”

“A lot of them had as much gray hair as you and me and, you know, if you had passed them on the street, you might have – and if they were in civilian clothes – you might have thought they were accountants or doctors or, you know, worked at Home Depot.”

After the mission started, the CIA provided audio and video of the raid in real time in a smaller room next to the Situation Room. The atmosphere, said Admiral Mullen, was tense.

Soon, the president and his advisers began crowding into the room where the video was being played, which was never meant to hold as many people as it did that day.  Brigadier General Marshall “Brad” Webb was receiving and interpreting information from the mission. Never expecting Obama to come in the room, he was sitting in the chair intended for the president.

“He started to get up and people were starting to go through the protocol and figuring out how to rearrange things,” the president said. “I said, ‘You don’t worry about it.  You just focus on what you’re doing.  I’m sure we can find a chair and I’ll sit right next to him.’  And that’s how I ended up (on a) folding chair.”

The group watched the hazy, but intelligible images and gasped when the first helicopter’s rotor stopped turning and it suddenly dropped, crashing over a stone wall.

“That helicopter didn’t make it to the right spot and everyone went, like, ‘Whoa,’” Biden said.

Obama remembers seeing the Secretary of State cover her mouth with her hand.

“It was just the shock of the moment,” Clinton said.  “It was, I mean, all of us sitting there, and I would even predict probably our military and defense colleagues, you know, for a minute were kind of holding that breath again.”

The mishap was blamed on a bad downdraft and unusually warm temperatures, which can affect lift and maneuverability. The president called it a “touch and go moment.”

“The only thing that I was thinking about throughout this entire enterprise was, ‘I really want to get those guys back home safe,’” he added.  “I want to make sure that the decision I’ve made has not resulted in them putting their lives at risk in vain, and if I got that part of it right, if I could look myself in the mirror and say as commander in chief I made a good call.”

Back inside the Situation Room, the loss of a helicopter didn’t make any difference in Admiral McRaven's monotone play-by-play voice, beamed in from Afghanistan.

“Did not miss a beat.  He is a cool customer,” said Obama.

Clinton recalled watching the SEALs leave the helicopters.

“We could see our guys moving,” she said.  “It was an intense experience for all of us because it was real time, visually, until we lost the visual connection inside the building.”

The SEALs had moved inside the compound with their body armor, weapons and night vision. 

“At this point, I think all of us understand that we’re a long way to go before the night is done,” Obama said. “And, you know, I’ve said this was the longest 40 minutes of my life.”

As the SEALs moved inside, the national security team listened for “Geronimo,” the code name for bin Laden.

“We knew that was the call sign and when we heard that, they felt they had identified Geronimo, that was the first moment, and then Geronimo KIA,” the president said.

Several members of the president’s national security team told NBC News that there were provisions in place to take bin Laden alive.

“But we also understood that it was not likely that he was going to be giving himself up in that way,” Obama said, “and that there was a strong possibility that he would end up being killed if in fact he was in the compound.”

Along with precision and planning, prayer played a role for some of the president’s closest advisers.  Vice President Biden and Admiral Mullen both nervously spun rosary rings on their fingers as they received word that the body of the man they believed was bin Laden had been put on a helicopter with U.S. forces.

“We knew the mission had been successful in that bin Laden was on board, but then it was an hour flight back,” Biden said.

Biden had begun to put his rosary away when he felt a tap on his shoulder from Mullen.

“I leaned down," Mullen explained. "I said, ‘Mr. Vice President, not yet. Keep it going because as important as killing, capturing or killing bin Laden was, it was more important to get him out.’ And so we were a long way, even as we got bin Laden, his body in that helicopter, we were a long way from completing that mission at that point.”

The death photo
When the SEAL team made it safely back to Afghanistan, photos were transmitted to the president and his team to offer photographic proof that bin Laden was dead.

When asked about seeing the picture of bin Laden, who had been shot in the head, the president took a long pause.

“I think it’s wrong to say that I did a high five,” he said, “because you have a picture of a dead body and, you know, there’s I think regardless of who it is, you always have to be sober about death.  But understanding the satisfaction for the American people, what it would mean for 9/11 families, what it would mean for the children of folks who died in the Twin Towers who never got to know their parents, I think there was a deep-seated satisfaction for the country at that moment.”

Secretary Clinton believes strongly that the president was right not to release the photos.

“I looked at them,” she said. “Obviously, (it's) never easy to see any dead body, but it was part of the job. I think we made the right decision not to sensationalize this, not to desecrate it, so to speak.  His body was flown to a Navy ship. It was given a proper Islamic burial at sea and I think that we handled it exactly right.”

After the president and his team felt confident that bin Laden was indeed dead, they began calling Cabinet members, Congressional leaders and foreign heads of state.

The president called Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

“I think it was an important symbol of who we are as a people,” he said of the calls.  “We get into these partisan fights, administrations come and go, but there’s a certain continuity about who we are and what we care about and what our values are.”

For Mullen, one of the most important calls placed was to his Pakistani military counterpart about the crashed helicopter.

When the first pictures of the wreckage emerged hours later, aviation websites went wild.  The crashed chopper appeared to be proof of a stealth version of the Blackhawk that the United States had been rumored to be developing for years.  Its noise-reducing technology and unique fin had been designed for near silent, invisible operation.  In coming days, neighborhood children picked through pieces of what had been among the military's best kept secrets. 

“I called General [Ashfaq Parvez] Kayani in Pakistan,” Mullen said.  “I felt obligated to let him know what had happened … and then part of that conversation was about the helicopter and I said, ‘We need that back.’”

As more calls were made, the news began to leak, spread at lightning speed by the Internet. The president and his advisers, however, were unaware that throngs of young people were pouring into Lafayette Park to cheer outside the White House.

“The thing that surprised me that night and I don’t think we had planned for was the public reaction,” Donilon said.  “We walked out and we could hear the noise and I remember very clearly turning to whoever was walking next to me saying, ‘What is that?’”

Secretary Clinton described it as an “astonishing moment.”

“We could hear this roar. We had no idea what it was,” she said.  “Then all of a sudden we were able to decipher, 'U.S.A., U.S.A.'”

Telling his family
Before the president heard the cheering crowds and addressed the nation, he checked in with the first lady. 

“She’s at dinner," he said. "I let her know, you know, that I’m probably going to miss dinner because I’ve got a few other things going on tonight.  It turns out we had a fairly important thing to announce.”

He recalled telling his daughters that bin Laden was dead.

“Malia and Sasha, I think, were too young to fully absorb 9/11.  On the other hand, they’ve grown like all our children have grown up in the shadow of 9/11 and terrorism and understood who Osama bin Laden was.” 

The president said that the full impact of the mission hit him a few days later when he met the SEALs who had carried out the operation. He said that he gave the pilot of the helicopter that crashed a “pretty good hug.”

“They presented me with the flag that had gone on that mission, signed by all of them on the back and I think it’s fair to say that will probably be the most important possession that I leave with from this presidency,” he said.

Editor's note: Click here to watch the special edition of Rock Center with Brian Williams, 'Inside the Situation Room,' that aired Wednesday, May 2 on NBC.

Rock Center

Nearly a year after Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan, President Barack Obama, Admiral Mike Mullen, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke exclusively to NBC's Brian Williams. Pres. Obama reflected on the raid from the White House Situation Room, describing the tense moments as "the longest 40 minutes of my life."

Editor's note: Click here to watch the special edition of Rock Center with Brian Williams, 'Inside the Situation Room,' that aired Wednesday, May 2 on NBC.

Rock Center and Associated Press reporting

One World Trade Center, the giant monolith being built to replace the twin towers destroyed in the Sept. 11 attacks, will lay claim to the title of New York City's tallest skyscraper on Monday. Workers will erect steel columns that will make its unfinished skeleton a little over 1,250 feet high, just enough to peak over the roof of the observation deck on the Empire State Building.

Explore a panoramic image of New York City from the 69th floor of One World Trade Center

The milestone is a preliminary one. Workers are still adding floors to the building once referred to as the "Freedom Tower" and it isn't expected to reach its full height for at least another year, at which point it is likely to be declared the tallest building in the U.S., and third tallest in the world.

NBC's Harry Smith toured One World Trade Center and reported on the tower's construction progress last month for Rock Center with Brian Williams. At the time, iron worker Kevin Murphy told Smith, “In the next couple of weeks, we’re there.  That’s going to be another big, you know, special day.  Pretty much from here on up, everything’s special, you know?”

Click here to read the full story about One World Trade Center on msnbc.com

Click here to watch Harry Smith's report, "The Rising," from NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams.

Nearly a year after Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces, President Barack Obama described the tense moments spent watching the raid from the White House Situation Room.

In an exclusive interview with Rock Center Anchor and Managing Editor Brian Williams, the president recalled the moment when one of the helicopters used by Seal Team Six and special forces encountered problems.

“There’s silence at this point inside the room,” the president told Williams in an interview airing on NBC's Rock Center, “Inside the Situation Room,” on Wednesday, May 2 at 9pm/8 c.  

The raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan led to the al-Qaeda mastermind’s death.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while glimpsing at the famous photo of her and the president’s top advisors in the Situation Room during the raid, joked that she covered her mouth like “when my husband drags me to an action movie.”

Putting the jokes aside, Clinton said that she stills feels adrenaline rushing through her body when she thinks of the night U.S. forces killed bin Laden.

“What it conjures up is all of the emotions that were running through my and every other person in that small group,” Clinton told Williams.  “It was just an extraordinary experience and a great privilege to be part of.”

Editor's note: Click here to watch the special edition of Rock Center with Brian Williams, 'Inside the Situation Room,' that aired Wednesday, May 2 on NBC.

White House photo by Pete Souza

 Rock Center with Brian Williams has been given unprecedented access to the White House Situation Room and learned new details about the events leading up to the raid targeting Osama bin Laden.

As the one year anniversary of the death of bin Laden approaches, President Barack Obama spoke exclusively to Rock Center Anchor and Managing Editor Brian Williams from the Situation Room, the most secure and secret part of the White House.  The interview, a first for network television, will air during an hour-long Rock Center special, "Inside the Situation Room," on Wednesday, May 2 at 9pm/8c.

White House photo by Pete Souza

The iconic photograph taken inside the Situation Room offered the world the first glimpse of Pres. Obama's national security team at work during the Special Operations mission. Many of the people present in the room on the day bin Laden was killed are speaking to Rock Center about that historic night.

In addition to the president, Brian Williams interviewed Vice President Joseph Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough and John Brennan, assistant to the president for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.

Editor’s Note: NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams, "Inside the Situation Room," will air on Wednesday, May 2 at 9pm/8c on NBC.

Rock Center

In New York City, the toughest ticket in town is for the hit Broadway show The Book of Mormon. Producers now hold a lottery before each performance to award cheap seats to 20 lucky theatregoers. Rock Center with Brian Williams stopped by the Eugene O'Neill Theatre and saw the lottery has become a show of its own.

By Chelsea Clinton
Rock Center Special Correspondent

Every day, more than 50 million Americans are at risk of not having enough to eat; yet, each year in the United States, 40 percent of our edible food is simply thrown away. Today, in the face of unprecedented need, there is no one face of the hungry - they are children, parents, grandparents and even the working poor.

Many of us think about hunger when there are canned food drives around Thanksgiving, but hunger doesn't have a season. Year-round, there are millions of pounds of unserved food that could be put to better use. At one Fortune 500 restaurant company, excess food is being put to use.  The food is finding its way from restaurant kitchens to the places where people need it most, including missions, shelters and after-care programs. I saw this program firsthand in Orlando, Fla., earlier in April.

Darden owns the largest number of casual dining restaurants in the country, including such well-known brands as Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse and Red Lobster. In 2004, Darden management noticed that some of its restaurant managers were engaged in what they called 'random acts of kindness.'  Instead of throwing away unserved food at the end of each night, some managers were donating it to local food banks and hunger relief organizations. It was a small percentage of places, but Drew Madsen, Darden president and chief operating officer, told me that it was enough to make the company take notice. In 2004, donating became a company-wide policy and today, in every one of Darden's more than 1,900 locations, staff members stay extra time to prepare, package, freeze and store food for pickup by local food bank partners. Darden calls it their 'Harvest' program.

Darden's now systematic acts of kindness come with a clear financial benefit - it receives a tax benefit for its donations. The company is also protected from legal liability if someone becomes ill from its donated food through the Good Samaritan Law, provided restaurants have properly prepared, packaged and labeled the food. When I asked Madsen if it would be cheaper to just throw the food away, he admitted it would be, but said that his company sees nourishing its communities as part of its mission. It was something I heard echoed in the kitchens and dining rooms of the Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouses I visited. It's clear that for the people who work throughout the Darden brands that harvesting the food for the hungry is as much a part of their job as making and serving food to their customers.

Dave Krepcho, president of the Second Harvest Food Bank, told me he thought more programs from more restaurants like Darden's could make a significant dent in our hunger challenge.

Editor's note: Click here to watch Chelsea Clinton's 'Making a Difference' report from NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams.

To learn more about rhino poaching in South Africa and around the globe please check out the links below:

• Stop Rhino Poaching
• Forever Wild
• World Wildlife Fund
• Save the Rhino
• Saving Rhinos
• Rhino Revolution
• International Rhino Foundation
• Pilanesberg Wildlife Trust
• The Onderstepoort Veterinary Genetics Laboratory

Click here to watch Harry Smith's original report, 'The Last Stand,' from NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams.

By Michael Beyman
CNBC

On a warm, late November morning in Augusta, Georgia, workers are putting the finishing touches on a brand new Costco Wholesale warehouse, set to open in less than 24 hours. This is the 597^th Costco location – the 20^th opened last year – and employees are racing to install light fixtures, paint doors, and stock the last of the shelves in time for the grand opening.

Warehouse manager Waymon Bell is keeping track of every last detail as he begins his tenth lap around the building, inspecting the aisles of merchandise and checking in with his workers along the way.

“We’re in a facility that is three acres under one roof, so we do a lot of laps around here,” Bell said. “There is still a very long list of things to do, but we will, without question, make it. I’m looking forward to tomorrow morning.”

Though the last-minute burst of activity may seem like the typical preparations for any store opening, Costco is anything but a typical store. Its floors are bare cement, its ceiling nothing but stark steel beams and skylights, and most of the newly-delivered merchandise sits on the same industrial pallets on which it was shipped. There are no signs or directories, and customers have to pay a membership fee before they can even walk in the door.

Such a lack of frills might seem like a deterrent to would-be shoppers, but there is no evidence of that in Augusta, where individuals line up patiently to join 64 million other Costco members in a retail revolution.

Costco’s low prices and bare-bones operation have not only changed how people shop, but how much they buy. Those unmarked aisles force customers to wander, creating opportunities for them to stumble across – and pick up – items they weren’t expecting. It’s a common Costco experience for customers to spend more than they anticipated.

“I thought I would spend about 25 dollars, and I ended up spending over 700,” says Gail Creighton, as she left the Hackensack, N.J., warehouse. “It’s why my husband never lets me come here.”

Brian Wansink, a professor of consumer behavior at Cornell University, says it’s no coincidence people overspend. “Shopping at a warehouse club gives us license to spend like we otherwise wouldn’t if we were in a normal store. We are motivated to save money, we are motivated to recoup our membership fee, and as a result, we might even end up spending a bit more.”

Spending more can be tough to avoid when almost everything is sold in bulk. Waffles are sold in packs of 60. Costco’s eggs are available in packs of 90. Mayonnaise is sold in gallon jugs. “It’s part of the American psychology,” explains marketing consultant Pam Danziger. “More and bigger is better.”

Despite the idea that customers like more, Costco stocks surprisingly few items, only around 4,000. The lack of selection is deliberate. “There’s only one variety of ketchup,” Danziger explains. “You don’t have to choose from a variety. They’ve edited it down for you. You’ve paid them to do it.”

Costco’s selection in any one category of goods may be limited, but it actually features a wide range of products. Three-quarters of what it sells are what it calls “triggers,” staples such as cereal, detergent and paper towels. The remaining 25% are what Costco calls “treasures,” items that make shopping an adventure. Turn the corner and you might find Sony flat-screen TVs, Cartier watches, and Prada handbags that appear on Costco’s shelves one day, but are gone the next. That uncertainty creates a sense of urgency, and is all part of the Costco shopping experience.

“What Costco does is it really understands their consumer,” Danziger says, “understanding what’s going to excite them, and then making sure you have the product that’s going to be there to excite them.”

Costco does draw complaints from its members. The biggest? Long lines at the checkout.

“It’s too damn long” says Costco member Peter Million. “It takes a long time to make your purchases.”

Another common criticism: having to buy everything in such large quantities.

“The real peril of the warehouse club is not that you spend too much money,” says Wansink. “I think it’s that you actually waste the food because it goes uneaten or you end up eating way too many calories.”

Costco’s sparse layout and no-frills shopping experience certainly create an image of a discount operation. But do shoppers really save money by shopping there? The company says that nothing in the warehouse is marked up more than 15% - considerably lower than the 25% mark-up at an average supermarket, or the 50% mark-up at a typical department store. And a recent independent study by Consumers’ Checkbook, a non-profit consumer advocacy group, confirms that Costco’s prices on food alone are about 30% lower than the largest supermarket chains.

Costco also claims a low price doesn’t necessarily mean something is cheaply made. The company’s single best selling product – its Kirkland Signature bath tissue – undergoes regular, intense scrutiny at Costco’s headquarters in Issaquah, Washington. Blue-coated lab technicians subject toilet paper to a constant battery of tests, checking its thickness, strength, softness and color. Corporate buyers also make repeated visits to the eight paper mills that make it, checking every detail and searching for flaws. All that effort may sound a bit obsessive, but Costco sells $400 million worth of toilet paper – more than a billion rolls – each year.

Whether it’s redefining the store layout, keeping prices lower than its competitors, stocking an eclectic mix of products, or building a better toilet paper, Costco’s success at redefining retail is undeniable – the company weathered the recession far better than most, and its stock price has continued to perform strongly.

Costco’s also created one of the most devoted followings of any store in the country. On the morning of the Augusta warehouse’s grand opening, Rachel and Danny Devine arrived early with their children to be among the first inside.

“We’ve been waiting for a Costco ever since we moved to Georgia. We were members in Maryland and Utah,” Rachel Devine says. “We’re really happy Costco is here.”

For Costco, it’s doing the little things right, over and over again, that has made the company a success, and made its co-founder and recently-retired CEO, Jim Sinegal, a very wealthy man.

 “I think to most stories, there’s always a bit more behind the curtain than you expect,” Sinegal told CNBC. “Generally speaking, when people ask, I tell ‘em ‘all we’re trying to do is sell stuff cheaper than anybody else.’” 

Editor's Note:  Carl Quintanilla's hour long CNBC Original documentary, 'The Costco Craze: Inside the Warehouse Giant' premieres Thursday, April 26 at 9pm ET/PT on CNBC. The documentary will re-air on April 28, April 30 and May 4 on CNBC.

By Kate Snow, Janet Klein and Dustin Stephens
Rock Center

For Barbara Latasiewicz, home was a hospital room.  The Poland native, who had cleaned homes in the Chicago area for 20 years, suffered a stroke while on the job in September 2009.  An ambulance took her to Adventist La Grange Memorial Hospital in Illinois.

"I was thinking that after a few days, that I'm just gonna get better," Latasiewicz told NBC’s Kate Snow through a translator in an interview airing April 25 at 9pm/8 c on Rock Center with Brian Williams.

Latasiewicz suffered paralysis on one side of her body, but eventually became well enough to leave the hospital.  However, more than two years later, the 62-year-old was still in the hospital.

“She hasn’t needed to be in this acute facility for a long time,” said Richard Carroll, the hospital’s chief medical officer.

When asked about Latasiewicz’s more than two year stay at the hospital he oversees, Carroll said, “That’s really a function of how our health care system is working right now, which is it’s not working very well at all, particularly in cases like this.”

Carroll said that Latasiewicz belonged in a skilled nursing facility where she would receive a more appropriate rehabilitation, but she had no way to pay. Latasiewicz had no insurance and was an undocumented resident with no access to government safety-net programs like Medicaid.  Without payment, no facility would take her.

NBC News

Barbara Latasiewicz

The end result? Latasiewicz stayed at La Grange.  Her care cost the hospital $1.4 million.  A skilled nursing facility would have been a fraction of the cost.

An NBC News investigation discovered that cases like Latasiewicz’s are not unusual, but the result of current health care policies and guidelines.  They are known as “permanent patients” and are hidden in plain sight in hospital rooms across the country.  That’s because under federal law, hospitals must treat any patient who needs emergency medical attention even if they have no way to pay.  Nursing and rehab facilities are not required by law to do so.  At the same time, hospitals cannot discharge a patient without a plan in place for his or her ongoing care.  The result is patients stuck in the hospital in need of long-term care but with nowhere to go, large medical bills, and no way to pay – a cost that is usually covered at the hospital’s expense.

“It would be cheaper to take these patients and send them to the Ritz Carlton,” said Harvard University School of Public Health Professor Ashish Jha.  “They could get room service all day, and that would be cheaper.”

Jha estimates there are tens of thousands of these patients stuck in the hospital with no clear place to go.  Some stay an extra week, some months, and some like Latasiewicz even years.  NBC News spoke with officials at dozens of hospitals across the country who confirmed housing patients who didn’t need to be there for extended periods.

Many patients are stuck because they have no money or insurance to pay for long-term care.  Other patients may have insurance, but their medical needs are too complex for most skilled nursing facilities to accept.  Then there are those in limbo at the hospital waiting sometimes for months to qualify for Medicaid.  Once they’re approved, Medicaid will cover the nursing or rehab facility they need.

A spokesperson for the American Health Care Association which represents skilled nursing facilities says that the industry works with hospitals to find facilities for such hard-to-place patients.

According to data from the National Inpatient Sample database at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the problem of permanent patients appears to be on the rise.  From 2005 to 2009, the last years for which data was available, uninsured hospital patients with no access to Medicare or Medicaid in need of long term care increased 20 percent. 

NBC News

Garrick Amato

“Most of them are Americans,” Jha said. “And if they get hit by a bus, they get sick, they’re in this situation.”

Garrick Amato, 59, arrived at Banner Heart Hospital in Mesa, Ariz., after suffering a heart attack.  A few days later, he was ready to leave the hospital for a rehab facility.  However, Amato, who said he worked part-time at a local discount store, had no health insurance and no way to pay for his rehab. 

“I guess no nursing home will take me cause I don’t have insurance,” Amato said. 

Furthermore, as a single adult without dependent children, he did not qualify for Medicaid in Arizona. Amato spent most of March and much of April at the hospital.  Banner Hospital eventually found charity care for him that placed him in a skilled nursing facility where he belonged.

Other patients linger in hospitals despite their best efforts to find charity care.  Fatima Khydarova, a professor from Uzbekistan, has been at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., for more than two years.  Khydarova arrived there after suffering an incapacitating stroke while visiting her grandchildren in New York.  While Khydarova will never walk or talk again, doctors say she does not need to be in a hospital.

NBC News

Fatima Khydarova

“In a perfect world she should be either at home with her family caring for her or in a nursing home,” Maimonides CEO and President Pamela Brier said.

Khydarova’s grandchildren said that they cannot take care of their grandmother at their mother’s small apartment and at the same time make a living to support all of them.

“I’m working, I’m working.” said granddaughter Nigina Abdullaeva who works at a doctor’s office.

Dr. Jha of Harvard University says that the costs for treating permanent patients are passed on to other consumers through higher medical bills and insurance premiums.

“The bottom line is we’re all paying for it,” Jha said.

To mitigate the cost of these patients, some hospitals have paid out of their own funds to move them to skilled nursing facilities.  Once there, the hospital could pay for their care for the rest of their lives.

“Hospitals don't want to widely advertise that they will pay for your care elsewhere,” Jha said. “But in select situations, they look, and they realize, instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars to keep the patient in the hospital, it's probably cheaper for them to send them somewhere else.”

Back in Illinois, case workers at La Grange Hospital also struggled for years to find a more appropriate medical facility for Latasiewicz.  They eventually found one, but it was in her native Poland. 

Wiping tears away from her eyes, Latasiewicz told Kate Snow through a translator that she did not want to leave.  Latasiewicz lived in the United States for 20 years and has a son and grandchildren living nearby.  However, her son, Peter Latasiewicz, said he could not take his mother into the small apartment he shares with his children and another family.

“I wouldn’t be able to provide as much help and support and care for her,” Peter Latasiewicz said, “she’s got a lot of medical conditions where she requires 24/7 care.”

The hospital eventually went to court for permission to send Barbara to the medical facility in Poland. 

The hospital won and on March 1, Latasiewicz boarded a flight back to her native Poland.

In Brooklyn, Khydarova, the professor from Uzbekistan, remains at Maimonides and the hospital is still working hard to find a solution for her family

“She’s going to stay in the hospital unless we can find a spot for her,” CEO Brier said, “She could stay here potentially for the rest of her life.”

AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall

By Jay Kernis
Rock Center

UPDATED 4/24/12 1:40PM ET One month ago, Rock Center's Harry Smith told the Impossible Dream story of Greco-Roman wrestler Rulon Gardner, who won an Olympic gold medal in 2000 by defeating the Russian legend Alexander Karelin, and a bronze medal four years later.  

He retired at the end of his 2004 match and then ballooned to 474 pounds—and facing potentially serious health problems—signed on to be a contestant on NBC's The Biggest Loser. But he quit the reality series last year—and at age 40, decided he wanted one more shot at the Olympics to be held this summer in London. 

The U.S. Olympic Team Trials were held this past weekend in Iowa City, but Gardner ended up not competing for the one heavyweight position. Before he could face American opponents on the mat, he had to weigh less than 264.5 pounds. He could not make weight and didn't show up at the official Friday weigh-in.

In an e-mail to Rock Center, Gardner wrote, "I was within 5 lbs and it wasn't meant to be. I pushed hard this morning, a little too hard, but as in life, we never know until we try. My goal was health with (my wife) Kamie and I now have that."

At a news conference this past Saturday, Gardner further explained his decision. 

"I pushed myself for about a hard hour and I still had about six and a half hours before weigh-ins," Gardner said. "I started feeling pretty uncomfortable. I didn't feel good about it. I didn't feel good. I said, 'We've got to slow it down.' My body was to the point of saying it's time. I remember sitting there thinking, 'Is it worth it? Is it worth it?' I didn't come here to prove I'm still an Olympic gold medalist. I came here to prove I still have the heart of a champion."

In an e-mail to Rock Center, Greco-Roman head coach Steve Fraser said Friday morning was tough.

"Rulon called me a few hours before the weigh-in. He had been working out throughout the morning with one of my volunteer coaches helping him. Rulon apologized to me and said he had given it his best shot but got to a point (5 lbs over) where he felt he couldn't go any further. He was hurting and it was emotional. I told him I was proud of him and reassured him that we loved him. He has accomplished so much in Greco during his great career. I told him his good health is what is the most important thing now. And encouraged him to work to keep this weight off and be healthy. We need him around."

When Harry visited Gardner at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs last month, his weight was very much on his mind, and everyone else's.

HARRY SMITH: What do you weigh now?

RULON GARDNER: That's a question I get asked-- um, every day.

Even his coaches wanted to know what number would pop-up when Gardner  agreed to allow our camera into the locker room. For reasons only Gardner knows, he would not turn on the scale or show us what he weighed.

SMITH: I think you turned it off!

GARDNER: (Laughs) You caught that?

When Harry spoke with Gardner, he was at least 30 pounds overweight. But he was working out morning and night and vowed he would make weight in time for the trials.

The heavyweight position was won this past weekend by U.S. Army Sgt.1st Class Dremiel Byers, who came in seventh at the 2008 Olympics. For many years, Gardner had competed against and trained with Byers, the only U.S. Greco-Roman wrestler to win gold, silver and bronze medals at the World Championships.

Gardner says he wants to stay involved with USA Wrestling, help other wrestlers prepare for the London Games, and keep working out to stay in shape and not regain the weight again.

Coach Steve Fraser told Harry that even if Gardner did not earn a place on the team, his presence in Colorado Springs made the other Greco-Roman athletes work harder. In his e-mail to us, he said, "Rulon accomplished a lot in my mind. For himself he got his life back on track and has better purpose and better health. He went 100% at trying to make this goal happen. Yes, he fell a bit short but gave all he had. He says he wants to help Byers prepare this summer to win his Olympic medal now. And I know he will. As for helping others? He set an example of great work ethic and total commitment. Something all wrestlers can learn from."

Fraser added, "Rulon Gardner is one special human being!"

Editor's Note: Harry Smith's report, 'The Heavyweight,' originally aired Mar. 21 on NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams.

By Meghan Frank
Rock Center

Just days after we aired “Last Stand,” a Rock Center story on the epidemic of illegal rhino poaching in South Africa, we received horrible news. Poachers had attacked three of the rhinos featured in our report.

Our Rock Center investigation that aired in February looked at the dramatic spike in rhino poaching in South Africa. The rise in illegal poaching stems from a growing demand for rhino horn in Asia, where the horn is believed to be a miracle cure.

On the night of March 2, poachers targeted several rhinos that belonged to Graeme Rushmere, the owner of Kariega Game Reserve in South Africa. Veterinarian Will Fowlds, who was also featured in our story, rushed to the scene to try to save the injured rhinos. Fowlds found one of the rhinos dead at the scene, but the two others were still alive, clinging to life. Poachers had shot the rhinos with tranquilizer darts, hacked through their skulls with a machete to get every inch of their horns and left them to bleed to death.

Fowlds and the Kariega team began working around the clock to try to save the two surviving rhinos, a female rhino named Thandi and a male named Themba. Fowlds cleaned their wounds, injected them with antibiotics and gave them medicine to try to ease their pain. For weeks Fowlds and the game reserve staff monitored and tended to the rhinos, but after surviving for nearly a month, Themba died from his injuries. Thandi is still alive.

The traumatic experience of trying to save these severely injured rhinos has been heartbreaking for Fowlds, but it’s also been a call to arms.

“I made a promise to a dead rhino, his name was Themba, that I would make every single day, all 24 days of suffering, count, that I would do everything in my ability to turn suffering into a pain-free future for other rhino,” Fowlds said.

Themba’s death is part of a scourge that’s threatening the rhinos in South Africa and the species as a whole. Already this year poachers have slaughtered more than 170 rhinos for their valuable horns.

Rhino horn has long been prescribed to cure fevers and colds in traditional Asian medicine, but demand in recent years has skyrocketed, and some experts believe this is due to a rumor circulating in Vietnam that rhino horn cures cancer. Scientists have found rhino horn’s medicinal value to be next to nonexistent, but demand continues to grow and the price of rhino horn rises with it. Gram for gram, rhino horn can be more valuable than gold or cocaine.

South Africa is trying every means possible to protect the species, but poachers are wiping out rhinos at a rate of more than one a day and conservationists fear the poaching will continue to rise. Already the killing this year is poised to outpace last year’s record death toll of 448 rhinos.

Fowlds says he is trying not to get thrown into a state of despair by the figures.

“The fear of where this is heading could quite easily paralyze us if we don't remain focused on that which we are able to do. In this war, being fought on so many sides, the most important thing is for each one of us to take care of our portion of the frontline,” Fowlds said.

At the moment, Will Fowld’s frontline is tending to the wounds of Thandi, who is still fighting against all odds to stay alive.

Editor's Note: Click here to watch Harry Smith's full report, Last Stand, that aired on Rock Center Feb. 22.

More From Rock Center:

• South African town dehorns rhino in attempt to ward off poachers
• On Assignment: Getting face to face with a rhinoceros
• Spike in rhino poaching threatens survival of species

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: Jamaican track and field Olympians, including record holder Usain Bolt, say Jamaican yams are the secret to their success.  NBC's Clare Duffy reports.

Click here to watch NBC's Lester Holt's full report, 'Running Man,' that aired April 18 on NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams

In this online exclusive, Madonna addresses the controversy over whether her new album's title, MDNA, is a thinly veiled reference to the drug MDMA, or Ecstasy. Madonna told Rock Center's Harry Smith that there's no coincidence between the album title and the drug.

Click here to watch Harry Smith's full interview with Madonna, 'Truth or Dare,' that aired on April 18 on Rock Center with Brian Williams.

By Clare Duffy and Sopan Deb
Rock Center

The fastest runner in the world happens to train with his stiffest competition, who also happens to be his friend and teammate.

Such is life for Usain Bolt of Jamaica, who is planning a second act at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Bolt is competing against fellow countryman Yohan Blake, who is aiming to knock the king off his throne at the London games, now just 100 days away.

"I want to just wow people, just to stun the world," Bolt told NBC’s Lester Holt in an interview scheduled to air Wednesday night on Rock Center. "When they turn their TV off after these races, they should sit back in their chairs for a minute and think about what just happened."

Bolt has already stunned the world many times with his seemingly effortless speed. At the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, he introduced himself to the global public by storming to a new world record of 9.69 seconds in the 100 meters. He won his second gold medal in the 200 meter final, setting another world record at 19.30 seconds. He added a third gold by running in the third leg as the Jamaican team won the 4-by-100 relay.

The streets of Jamaica shook with wild celebrations and, when Bolt returned home, his fellow countrymen greeting him like a conquering hero. He had just turned 22 years old.

"It was like God knew this was going to happen," Bolt said. “There were so many people pushing hands in the car... It was shocking, the amount of people who were there to come celebrate me, so it was wonderful."

In 2009, Bolt set two more world records at the World Track & Field Championships in Berlin, running an astounding 9.58 seconds in the 100 meters and a 19.19 in the 200 meter race.

However, in 2011, at the World Track & Field Championships in South Korea, Bolt was disqualified in the 100 meter event because of a false start. He lost the 100 meter title to his friendly rival Blake. 

Last September, at the Diamond League meeting in Brussels, Blake ran the second fastest 200 meter time ever at 19.26 seconds (Bolt’s world record is 19.19). At age 19, Blake is also the youngest sprinter ever to break the 10 second barrier for the 100 meter race. 

"I think people want the rivalry because it builds the sport up, but it’d be much easier if we were in separate camps or separate countries," Bolt said. "[But] it helps us push ourselves in training and work hard together."

‘Favorite sons’

Bolt is commonly referred to as one of Jamaica’s "favorite sons" and the country is very protective of him. One shopkeeper, for instance, refused to sell him a motorbike out of fear that he might get into an accident.

"He’s, like, ‘I’m not going to sell you a motorbike.’ I was, like, ‘Why?’ He was like, ‘Really? If anything happen to you, they’re going to come to me, so I’m not going to sell [it to] you.’ So that’s out the window completely," Bolt said. "If I mention motorbike to anybody, they freak out. So I just leave it alone." 

Editor’s note: Lester Holt’s full broadcast report about Usain Bolt airs Wednesday, April 18, at 9pm/8c, on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams.

Pop icon Madonna dishes on the challenges of single motherhood and living life in a “metaphorical fishbowl” in an interview with Rock Center's Harry Smith.  After more than 30 years in the spotlight, does Madonna ever think about taking a break? 

Click here to watch Harry Smith’s full interview with Madonna, “Truth or Dare,” that aired April 18 on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams. 

By Becky Bratu
msnbc.com

While American presidential campaigns seem to last for years, the French campaign only lasts a few months from start to finish.

The differences between the two systems are significant. In France, candidates’ personal lives are not scrutinized to the degree that U.S. presidential hopefuls’ are and their time on radio or television is very closely monitored by a government agency. Ten staffers record and count every single minute that any one of the 10 presidential candidates is on air to ensure that every candidate receives equal time.

In France, there are no political television commercials. The only mass exposure for candidates is on network news and public affairs programs.

“In the morning, for example, which is our primetime, the biggest candidates will be more exposed,” Radio France Inter news director Jacques Monin told Rock Center Special Correspondent Ted Koppel in an interview scheduled to air Wednesday night on Rock Center.

“But we have to give this equal access to the candidates. So, we can find, we have to find other times, which can be in the afternoon, in the evening, in the night as well.”

Between April 9 and April 22, however, as the first round approaches, inspectors count not only the number of minutes, but the placement of an appearance during the broadcast day, which has to be the same for all 10 candidates.

”It is therefore very hard to strike the right balance,” Christine Kelly, the director of the agency in charge of counting, told Koppel. “The media therefore do unfortunately cancel a certain number of political broadcasts.”

REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

Official campaign posters for French President and UMP political party candidate Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Party candidate Francois Hollande, for the 2012 French presidential election, are displayed on a wall in Paris April 16, 2012.

With less than a week until France casts its votes in the first round, three opinion polls showed President Nicolas Sarkozy’s narrow lead over his chief rival, Socialist Francois Hollande, is steady or shrinking, and the incumbent is still expected to lose the subsequent May 6 runoff.

"He’s been trailing Hollande in the second round pretty consistently," Justin Vaïsse, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told msnbc.com. "It’s hard to see where the reservoir of votes would come from to make him win."

While Sarkozy, a conservative, is seen as unpopular, Hollande – who was once nicknamed Mr. Jell-O by Socialist leader Arnaud Montebourg -- owes his candidacy to former International Monetary Fund Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He was the favorite to lead the Socialists to victory in France until a 32-year-old maid at a New York hotel alleged that he had sexually assaulted her after she entered his suite. More recently, Strauss-Kahn has been under investigation for his involvement in an organized prostitution ring.

Even in a sexually tolerant country such as France, that was too much.

“It was extreme. It was perceived as sickness,” French political scientist Dominique Moisi told Koppel.

Hollande’s private life, however, has not come under fire. The man who might become France's next president is living with a journalist he is not married to. He also had a relationship spanning decades with 2007 Socialist candidate Segolene Royal, with whom he had four children out of wedlock.

Another notable difference between the United States and France is voter turnout. In France, where an estimated 70 percent of eligible voters will take part in the election, the electorate is considered apathetic. A 60 percent turnout in the United States, however, is perceived as high.

Can the 'Toulouse effect' save Sarkozy from defeat in France?

While Sarkozy and Hollande are stealing most of the spotlight in the media, polls indicated far-right National Front candidate Marine Le Pen had strengthened her position in third place, ahead of hard left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon in fourth.

“For me, the National Front is rebel. It’s punk,” a supporter who calls himself Archibold and produces political Web videos aimed at young people, told Koppel. “We’re not mainstream at all.” Archibold said he chooses to remain anonymous because some employers would not approve of far-right allegiances.

Meanwhile, Sarkozy’s campaign is relying on some techniques borrowed from across the Atlantic, such as frequent appearances by the current president’s glamorous wife Carla Bruni and American-style political rallies.

Thanks to U.S.-educated campaign directors, the Hollande campaign is getting the American treatment, too.

“We’ve been advocating for, you know, more America in the French election for two years,” Guillaume, one of Hollande’s campaign directors, told Koppel. “We’ve been pushing this, you know, ‘let’s do what Obama did’ for two years.”

As part of that new approach, Hollande’s campaign is also launching a door-to-door campaign. The approach appears to be working.

Sarkozy saw his lead for the first ballot slip to half a percentage point from two points about a week ago in a poll by Ipsos Logica, with 29 percent support to Hollande's 28.5 percent. 

The same poll showed Hollande retaining a 10-point lead in voting intentions for the May 6 runoff with 55 percent to Sarkozy's 45 percent, unchanged from a week earlier.

While the race for re-election is an uphill battle for Sarkozy, there remains a small possibility he can scrape his way to a second term in office if he wins in the first round and picks up some support from the centrist candidate's electorate, Vaïsse said.

"Frankly, apart from that scenario, it’s hard to see how he’ll be able to make it," he added.

Editor’s note: Click here to watch Ted Koppel’s full report that aired April 18 on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams. Reuters contributed to this report.