DNI Tulsi Gabbard resigning post

Hey, Sam, this comes at a time when we are in a paused, but still open-ended war with Iran. We have a situation in Cuba that sometimes seems to be moving from the back burner to the front. There's still Venezuela. It's a dangerous world out there. It's a big job. The President now has an opportunity to put somebody new in this role. Can you talk about how important the job of Director of National Intelligence is particularly now? SAMANTHA VINOGRAD (ON PHONE): Well, Tony, the job of the Director of National Intelligence is, unfortunately or fortunately, only as important as the commander in chief chooses to make it. Intelligence is only as important as the President chooses to make it. So assuming that President Trump installs a new director that he trusts, the job of the DNI, the Director of National Intelligence, is critical. The Director of National Intelligence is not only responsible for ensuring that the president's daily brief, the intelligence briefing that the president gets every day, contains the most important intelligence analysis that the president needs to hear, the DNI is responsible for briefing the president at the top of every National Security Council meeting with the latest and greatest intelligence on a particular matter, like Iran, like Venezuela, like Cuba. But even beyond that, Tony, the Director of National Intelligence, is responsible for not just overseeing the entire intelligence community, tens of thousands of people, tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, but also, ensuring that our intelligence community has the resources, talent, money, technology it needs to remain competitive in an incredibly complicated geopolitical moment. So the Director of National Intelligence is not only serving the president's intelligence needs, they're doing so, not just by briefing the president, but by ensuring that the health of the intelligence community is adequate to keep the United States National Security as high as it can be.

Yeah, and that's where the stakes of this continue to matter for us as a country here. Sam Vinograd, thank you very much. Weijia Jiang, thank you very much. The news, again, is this, the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, will step down at the end of June, citing the health of her husband who has bone cancer. Our coverage will continue on CBS News 24/7,your local news, and tonight on the CBS Evening News. This has been a CBS News Special Report. I'm Tony Dokoupil. [MUSIC PLAYING]