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Anchored by Jake Tapper, The Lead airs at 4 p.m. ET on CNN.
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politics lead
Analysis: The truth about briefing Congress
Another day, another leak, another potential scandal, but this time, President Barack Obama is not facing the kind of blow back he did after the Benghazi and the IRS stories broke. And maybe it's because when it comes to data mining in the name of national security, the majority of Republicans are on his side.
"The NSA is not listening to your phone calls and not reading Americans' e-mails,'" Republican Congressman of Michigan Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told ABC's "This Week" Sunday.
"If this was September 12th, 2001, we wouldn't even be having this conversation," Sen. John McCain, R-Arizon, said on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday.
One of the central tenets of the Obama presidency is that government can play an important, positive role in the lives of the American people.
Obama said Friday that every member of Congress has been briefed on the surveillance programs, but Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison said that he himself has not been briefed.
"The real deal is, people probably won't be surprised to know that their members of Congress do end up voting for things that they don't know about," said CNN's chief congressional correspondent Dana Bash. "They don't really know what they're voting for, particularly when it comes to classified information."
Members of the intelligence committees do have oversight, receive information, and are briefed on such programs.
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national lead
Analysis: Can Americans trust government's vast surveillance program?
There are those who think he's a defender of basic American freedoms, others who think he is a traitor to his country, and still others who just don't know what to think.
Edward Snowden is the 29-year-old intelligence contractor who leaked top-secret National Security Agency information, revealing the incredible extent to which the government is monitoring and keeping records of not just phone calls but also apparently e-mails, internet searches, downloads, photos, Facebook pages, and more.
Snowden told The Guardian newspaper, which broke this story, that he did this to wake up American citizens.
"Even if you're not doing anything wrong, you're being watched and recorded," Snowden tells The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald in a video that was published Saturday. "You simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody, even by a wrong call, and then they can use the system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you've ever made."
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pop lead
Private investigator: Marilyn Monroe, Kennedys were in love triangle
The rumors that Marilyn Monroe had an affair with not one, but two Kennedys, have been swirling for years.
Now there are new details from a man who said he heard it all on tape. The Hollywood Reporter obtained boxes of files from former Hollywood private eye Fred Otash. His daughter says she turned the files over, in an effort to set the record straight about her father's life.
CNN "The Lead's" Erin McPike reports the juicy details in the video above.
money lead
Tech columnist: If Steve Jobs were alive, he would strangle Tim Cook
Tech giant Apple used to be synonymous with innovation, creating game-changing devices like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad on a regular basis.
But many were less than impressed with Apple CEO Tim Cook's big innovation at Monday's worldwide developer conference - iTunes Radio.
"If Steve Jobs were alive, he would strangle Tim Cook. This is borderline embarrassing what's going on," said Rocco Pendola, columnist with TheStreet.com.
"Before Steve Jobs died, he did one of the the best presentations we have ever seen from him. He put up a slide on the screen that said '2011: Year of the copycats?' He had Samsung, Blackberry, Hewlett Packard on there, and said they were copying his innovation, and to an extent it is true," said Pendola.
"But iTunes Radio is a Pandora knockoff," said Pendola, referring to the 13-year-old music streaming service.
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world lead
Reporter: NSA leaks did not harm national security
Revelations that the National Security Agency has engaged in widespread surveillance on American citizens have galvanized many in Washington.
The White House on Monday defended the administration's stance on the initiatives, calling them a necessary middle way between total privacy and unacceptable threat.
But Edward Snowden, the former intelligence worker who outed himself as the man responsible for leaking details of U.S. surveillance programs, told The Guardian newspaper such programs are excessively intrusive.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told NBC on Saturday that the NSA leaks are "literally gut-wrenching ... because of the huge, grave damage it does to our intelligence capabilities."
The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, who first broke the story of the NSA's broad surveillance, disagrees.
"Terrorists already know that the U.S. government tries to surveil their communications. Nothing that we revealed helps, quote, unquote, "the terrorists." All we did was tell our fellow citizens in the United States and around the world the extent and capabilities of how vast this surveillance state is and the reasons why it needs scrutiny and accountability," Greenwald told CNN.
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