says a bird was sucked into the engine of a plane carrying secretary of state hillary clinton from brussels to paris. you may remember cnn's own ali velshi was on the flight from new york to los angeles that was forced to make an emergency landing yesterday because of a bird strike. our mary snow is taking a closer look into what appears to be a growing problem. mary, what's going on? >> wolf, the incident on thursday, the emergency landing is still being investigated. it is not certain the kind of bird that struck the engines, but here in new york the city has stepped up efforts in recent years to cut the risk of bird strikes and that's because the population of canada geese has been increasing and they flock to areas near the city's major airports. just moments after delta flight 1063 took off from jfk airport thursday, it was clear something went wrong. >> delta 1063 has had an engine failure on the right engine declaring an emergency due to a bird strike. >> reporter: passengers described smoke and a loud noise in the cockpit. >> 1063, we'll clear the right. we lost the right. >> the pl

i spoke of this war in afghanistan at nato headquarters outside brussels, belgium, yesterday. i spoke with leon panetta and secretary of state hillary clinton. they sat down with me for an exclusive interview in brussels. listen. >> madam secretary, mr. secretary, thank you for being with us. >> we are glad to be with you. >> let's talk about afghanistan. $2 billion a week in u.s. taxpayer dollars being spent to maintain the troop level and the existence to the afghan people. is this money well spent right now? $100 billion a year for another two and a half years? >> well, first of all, wolf, we are in a transition and as we transition, the afghan security forces are stepping up to protect their own people and as we saw over the weekend with those deplorable attacks luckily, they were not successful and that was because the afghan security forces which our soldiers and others of the nato alliance have been training and mentoring. so i think that if you look as we do at the progress that has been made on the security side and other indicators and health, education and the econo

>> let's listen to leon panetta in brussels yesterday. >> this is not who we are. it's certainly not who we represent when it comes to the great majority of men and women in uniform, who are serving there. i expect that the matter will be fully investigated. >> now, he may say that, that this is going to be fully investigated, that this is not who we are. this is not what we're about but it comes on the heels of videos of marines urinating on dead bodies and the massacre that afghanistan is still dealing with allegedly, one u.s. soldier murdering 16 -- i think it was 16 afghan civilians. when you take all of this together, can this resonate the fact that the u.s. is condemning what is happening here and say it's an isolated incident? >> reporter: they are, i think in the eyes of many, become a troubling trend, breakdown of discipline. this is the fourth big investigation the u.s. has said it's conducting so far this year after the misconduct you've described. investigations themselves aren't going to quiet afghans. there's not been this immediate backlash of violen

wolf blitzer is on his way back from nato headquarters in brussels where he sat down today with secretary of state hillary clinton and defense secretary leon panetta for an exclusive joint interview. they discussed a wide range of topics including the u.s. drawdown in of aing afl and the nuclear threats from iran and north korea and the presidential election at home. listen to this. >> on syria, is president bashar al assad, according to your opinion, madam secretary, a war criminal? >> i'm not going to get into the labeling, wolf, because what i'm doing now is trying to see whether or not he is going to get the implement kofi annan's plan and i don't think it's useful to do anything other than focus on the six points of the plan. right now it doesn't appear, one again that he is going to follow through on what he has pledged to the international community he will do. we are still working to see about getting monitors in to be able to have an independent source of information coming after the security council. i will be going to paris tomorrow afternoon to meet with like-minded nations in

i'm wolf blitzer in brussels. you're in "the situation room." -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com >>> i'm here in brussels, belgium, for an exclusive joint interview tomorrow with the secretary of state hillary clinton and secretary of defense leon panetta. they're here on a ministerial summit on afghanistan. tomorrow in "the situation room" the interview will air. right now millions of americans are struggling to make ends meet and as they are we are learning more about how one federal agency has been wasting your taxpayer dollars. officials, even intern, with the general services administration enjoyed quite a few extravagant junkets to places like las vegas, hawaii, palm springs and even the south pacific and that's apparently just the tip of the iceberg. let's go straight to our senior congressional correspondent dana bash. she's getting new information. what's the latest now? >> reporter: the latest as our viewers probably know right now, t the gsa is supposed to be saving money by make the govern the more,

why did you have to go to brussels? >> they invite mead to come over. i'm going to be speaking with both the secretary of state and the secretary of defense. we'll have a joint interview tomorrow at nato headquarters right outside of brussels. i'm in brussels right now. i just got off the plane literally, secretary panetta's plane. we flew in from andrews air force base early this morning and just got here ready to do this show. there's a big nato defense ministerial and foreign ministerial joint meeting tomorrow to deal with the future of afghanistan which is the subject, obviously, close to my heart and close to the viewers' hearts. more than ten years the u.s. troops have been stuck in afghanistan. u.s. spending is hard to believe, $2 billion a week, more than $100 billion a year to maintain about 90,000 u.s. troops in afghanistan. a lot of them are supposed to stay through the end of 2014. major decisions are going to be made tomorrow here at the nato summit. also in chicago, there's a big summit coming up in may. so we're all over that and i'm look