Top Brass, Lawmakers Grapple With Rising Levels of Military Sexual Assault

Watch a live stream in the player above of President Barack Obama's speech at the National Defense University, scheduled to begin at 1:30 p.m. EDT Thursday.

President Obama summoned Pentagon leaders to the White House Thursday to discuss what Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey declared a crisis: sexual assaults in the military. At the center of the debate: should military commanders be stripped of their sole authority to decide whether complaints of sexual assault go forward?

Two members of the military responsible for preventing sexual assaults and protecting victims are facing allegations that they committed sex crimes. A recent Pentagon survey found that 26,000 service members were sexually assaulted in 2012. For more, Margaret Warner talks with Craig Whitlock of The Washington Post.

Tuesday should have been a good day for Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif. Her signature issue in Congress -- reducing sexual assaults in the U.S. military -- had just been forcefully endorsed by the president and secretary of defense. But Speier was not optimistic that major change is coming.

A new Pentagon report finds the official number of sexual assaults in the U.S. military rose to nearly 3,400 in 2012, while up to 26,000 cases went unreported. Ray Suarez talks to Time magazine's Mark Thompson about whether adjudication of sexual assault up the military chain of command affects the number of crimes reported.

The HBO documentary "Manhunt" details the the grueling work by CIA agents in the search and capture of Osama bin Laden.

How did the U.S. intelligence community embrace a more operational role in the days after September 11? Margaret Warner talks to New York Times national security correspondent Mark Mazzetti, who explores that transition in his new book, "The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the End of the Earth."

Margaret Warner talks to Pulitzer Prize winning author Mark Mazzetti on his new book "The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth." Mazzetti talks about the competition between the CIA and the Pentagon in the years following 9/11 as the global manhunt for terrorists intensified.

The prison at Guantanamo Bay holds 166 detainees captured and transferred to Cuba in coordination with U.S. counterterrorism operations abroad. How big is the place and how long are inmates closed in their cells? We have more stats here.

Over half of the inmates at Guatanamo Bay Prison are refusing to eat, protesting the length of their detention, legal limbo and quality of life. Ray Suarez talks with Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald about the origins of the protest and the question of self-determination when it comes to the prisoners' hunger strike.