Interview by E.D. Hill of FOX & Friends

HILL: Thousands of americans are starting to leave lebanon. We get the latest on the efforts to get them out. How are they getting out, where will they go? Sean mccormick joins us from washington, state department spokesperson.

MCCORMACK: Good to be with you.

HILL: Tell us what is the status, are are americans on board that cruise ship already, are you still in the process of getting them on?

MCCORMACK: As we speak, they're loading up. It has capacity of about 1,000 seats, so we want to get out as many people as we can. Probably over a thousand. Thursday and friday we're looking at moving thousands of people more out of lebanon. We want to get them out of there if they want to leave and back to their families.

HILL: How is it working? Do you coordinate with the israeli government because there's no one at hezbollah you can talk to to say don't lob a rocket, but how do you coordinate with to get them he there?

MCCORMACK: What we do is work with the israeli government, because there is a naval blockade, make sure that there is safe passage. U.S. Naval ships escorting the vessels back and forth. We work with the government of lebanon to make sure that there aren't any problems. So we're -- our diplomaing on the ground are working real hard to make sure our people get out safe and sound.

HILL: How far great is the concern that this could become a target for hezbollah or other targets?

MCCORMACK: You have to be concerned. This is a battle zone, and part of what we've been doing over the past several days, laying the groundwork so that our people can safely get from those places that are under fire, put them on buses, get to the assembly points, get on helicopters, get on those ships, so that takes a little bit of planning, that takes some logistics and some coordination, so that's what we've been doing over the past few days. Our priorities have been a safe, orderly, and timely exit of our folks from lebanon.

HILL: How many people have registered so far?

MCCORMACK: We have about 15,000 or so americans who have registered, that they are in the country.

HILL: How many want to leave?

MCCORMACK: This is going to be a rolling process, where we have on the order of thousands who want to leave. It's not until you really get into the evacuation that you know exactly how many people that you're going to have, but we have laid in the infrastructure for thousands of people to leave the.

HILL: And what about the cost? I understand there is a lauper taning to that from 2003. What does that say?

MCCORMACK: There is a law, it's actually the basic tenets of the law has been in place for 50 years. Basically what it says is american citizens would reimburse the u.S. Government the commercial airfare for leaving the country under these circumstances. But secretary rice wanted to go the extra mile for our american citizens in need, and we have waived that fee, so there is not going to be any charge we wanted to take away phi last worries that people might have, we understand they're experiencing great difficulties, so we wanted to take away toes worries.

HILL: What message would you have to people, a lot of american tourists travel there even though you have a state department warning. What would be your message to people?

MCCORMACK: Right now obviously we don't want people going in to lebanon. For those that are there, they have to assess whether or not they're in a safe place and whether they want to stay there. If they want to leave, we'll do everything we have can to make sure they're able to leave. Every american citizen who wants to leave is going to have that opportunity to leave.

HILL: Ok. If you have a loved one in lebanon and you would like information, call that number on your screen. You can also go to the state department web site. That's up on the screen as well and we'll have it on the "fox & friends" web site on our blog. Finally, where are they go and where is sort of your last stop for these person citizens?

MCCORMACK: Well, that ultimately will be up to them. Many want to come back to the united states, entering in through baltimore. The intermediate stop is if cyprus. This is an international operation spanning three continents and involving significant military and commercial assets, so we're going to be moving them out of beirut to cyprus and then we're going to work with each individual to see where they want to go, if they want to come back to the u.S., We'll make sure they get there.

HILL: When will dr. Rice be heading to the region?

MCCORMACK: She is right now looking at what the time to do, to make that trip is. She want to go there with she thinks it's going to be helpful, useful if bringing a lasting solution to the problem that we have. We don't want to be back in the situation three weeks from now or six months from now where you have a terrorist group that can drag a region back if to violence, so we're going to be looking for permanent solutions.

HILL: Thank you very much for joining us, sean mccormick.