global power, games of president bush out on the side. we believe assad simply carrying out iranian orders. what keeps you awake at night? when you reason that could effect any human aside, master of chaos on all jazeera, we understand the differences and similarities of cultures across the world. so no matter how you take it will bring you the news and current affairs that mattel to you. oh, hello and marianne was in london a quick look at the main stories. now. poland is accused. batteries have continued to help asylum seekers cross into a new territory. despite the better russian authorities clearing a makeshift camp on the polish order on thursday. batteries, officials, a hundreds of people have moved voluntarily to a reception center. west and borders of bell always remain essentially sealed. thousands of people, including women and children,

have been stuck in freezing conditions at the border for days. the situation out the border o belarus with poland, but also the, during your on the locker is deeply concerning. the new caution, closer seem use or vulnerable people as means to put pressure on other countries or is cynical aren't in her main made. those stands in full sort of out of it with all affected us. we remain vigilant on stand, ready to further help our allies injurious found us teenager, coll rittenhouse not guilty of murdering 2 men and wounding another we the jury find the defendant. kyle: he'd written tile each red house not guilty. a teenager opened fire with a semi automatic rifle during back black lives, massa, protesting commercial wisconsin last year. he pleaded not guilty ins as he acted in self defense. john hendern has worn out from commercial wisconsin. in this case,

this verdict would be final, the prosecution is not allowed to appeal it. and because he was not guilty on all of those counts, there's no possibility of him being charged again on those same chargers. that's double jeopardy. and that's not allowed here in the us. so written houses off scot free on these charges and has been convicted of nothing and therefore will serve no sentence. he's not on probation. he is simply a free man. and you could see the look on his face as he melted into tears of joy as he heard that verdict. and i think a lot of people were really expecting a conviction on some charge. and the reason for that is that the prosecution added lesser charges at the end. those are, are 2nd degree charges rather than the 1st degree homicide. first degree attempted homicide. first degree, reckless homicide. he was acquitted of all of those, but there were

a number of people lawyers that i spoke to and speculated that the prosecution had a chance of getting a conviction by adding those lesser charges late in the game. but that was not the case. this is a jury that decided decisively they have to do that unanimously. so the verdict in the courtroom was clear. you saw the reaction there. some people obviously very unhappy and some people very happy including the rittenhouse family, but the verdict out in the streets has not really yet happened. it was president joe biden, $1.00 trillion dollar spending bill has passed the house to representatives despite an attempt to stall a vote for hours by the chambers top republican bill and the improving education, lowering health care costs and tackling climate change, pos 220 votes to 213. now goes to the senate before it can be sign into law. public in house minority to kevin mccarthy, spoke a rec, old age and a half hours on thursday night cataloging alyssa, republican grievances let me be clear,

never in american history has so much been spent at one time. at one time, never in american history will so many taxes be raised in so much borrowing be need to be needed to pay for all this reckless spending. officers become the 1st country in western europe. to re impose a full coven locked down the new measures, starting on monday will loss from maximum of 20 days. austria is also making vaccinations, compulsory from february. many on the european countries are re i imposing restrictions as cases rise as well. and one of the story from india, the government has announced that it's withdrawing 3 controversial farm laws. legislation of triggered nationwide protests that lasted for more than a year. government to choose the measure saying they'd modernize the agricultural sector. but at pharma said that it hurt their livelihoods. was the headlines this how at the bottom line is coming next?

ah hi, i'm steve clements and i have a question. how can americans or the world trust the pentagon that embraces cover ups and lies when it makes mistakes? let's get to the bottom line. ah. can there be accountability in the fog of war? and what does that even mean when us forces bomb civilians from the skies in far away battlefields, and then wilfully cover up their mistake? that's exactly what my guest today have written about in an explosive investigation by the new york times. it's about a 2019 us bombing and a syrian border town named bach goos, which was one of the last hold outs of the islamic state fighters after a massive bombing campaign where at least 80 civilians were reportedly killed.

everything was bulldozed over and the file locked in a deep lock box in statements it now remind us of the type of distorted official communicates from places like china in iran or russia. the pentagon said that just 4 civilians were killed, but journalists found eternal pentagon reports that talk about many more killed, possibly, and even probably violations of the law of armed conflict. in other words, war crimes bag whose is where tens of thousands of isis families, refugees, and prisoners were staying in camps a few months after the bombing there. the islam state, which was once the size of tennessee crumbled and the president at that time, donald trump announced its leader ob walker albert daddy was killed. so what do we know now and what are the implications not only about this case, but about how the pentagon does business and communicates? joining us today are the reporters who uncovered the pentagon. cover up dave phillips covers the military for the new york times and is the author of alpha, eddie gallagher and the war for the soul of the navy seals and eric schmidt,

who covers terrorism and national security. and is a former pentagon correspondent for the new york times. he's the author of counter strike, the untold story of america, secret campaign against al qaeda. gentleman, thank you so much for joining us. this is truly an explosive report as i read it in david, why don't you describe to our audience what the underlying incident was that led to issues which we'll get into, but tell us about the underlying incident. right, so like you said, this is at the very end, i years long war against isis. and what was left of the caliphate fighters were basically trapped, corralled into a area, maybe a square mile against a river. and it was just a chaotic seam with, with lots of vehicles and makes shift tents and the hand dug bunkers. and there were thousands and thousands of people in there, certainly many fighters, but also lots of women and children there. and we have to remember that some of them were probably there willingly, but

a lot of them probably were not. so at the very end of this chaotic situation, and there's some sort of skirmish going on, we don't have a whole lot of details about it. but a secretive special operations group and american ground unit called in an air strike. and what they say is, is they were targeting about a does in fighters on the ground out. but what ended up happening is, is to f 15 e fighter jets come over and they drop really massive bombs on this area. and what they hit instead is dead center on a large group of women and children at somewhere between 50 and 70 people. and, and right away. and as you can imagine, because this is the last stand devices there's, there's drones overhead watching this whole thing. and right away drones see what has happened. and people in the air force command center, in,

in to tars se, holy smokes, ah, this was a really bad strike. we need to figure out what has happened here. and so they immediately preserve all the evidence, the video, the chat logs of what people were seeing, radio communications, and they reported up their chain to say, hey, we want you to know this happen. it might have been a war crime. we're not sure. and we need to do an investigation. well, david, i just want to emphasize something that you just said so that our, our viewers understand one ah, branch of our military services. that does geo spatial intelligence that has, you know, eyes in the skies was watching those, those are, you know, 7080 people, women and children. they had view of them. i. and then at the same time, a, another branch of the military flew in and they watched it like it was on tv and

saw these people get killed, not only the dropping of one bomb, but just to report your reporting. that those that had escaped, that were surviving, were then bombed again to make sure they were wiped out. i just want to make sure that's right, to understand. you know that the scaffolding of what you reported. right. and what was fascinating about this when we tried to where we started to unfold, it was that i at the operation center and could tar, like you said, you have this, this, it looks like a mission control at nasa. you have this big room with lots of screens and they've got access to satellites and drones and, and they are watching from a drone that flying above the isis hold out. they have no idea that another american military unit, a special operations unit called task force 9. this is a very classified unit that we had trouble even getting people to tell us the name of at the same time that the command center watching task force 9 has its own drone

up decides, is going to target this, this group and launches this air strike task force 9, so classified that the operation center has no idea that this is coming, so they watch a strike coming in real time that they never knew had even been authorized. so eric, let's take the next step. the pentagon has admitted killing 4 people for innocence as casualties. in this case, tell us what the real story is and tell us what some of the folks who observe what happened tried to do. well, it is dave is pointed out in the investigation. we found out you have the initial strike and then you have the investigation to that it starts this is dave said at the chaos this air command center in the car where a legal officer by the name of dean cor sack, takes it upon himself, says look, what i've just seen, we've just witnessed through these drawn feats, could well be a law of armed conflict, violation basically a law war violation and people need to know about it. and so what he does is he

tries to push this, excuse me, up the chain of command, both the, his is boss, the top legal officer at the kiosk, as well as to the generals who run the run the operations there. he got nowhere. so what he does next is he reaches out to basically what's the investigative body of the airport, the officer, the special investigations presents them with the evidence and allegations that he has. again, it goes nowhere. he finally turns to the overall watchdog and pentagon, the defense department inspector general, which is basically charge. we're looking at this kind of fraud, waste abuse, other things, the military commands either aren't looking into or glossing over, or trying to cover up. and that's where i want to turn the story back over today because it was fascinating how one complaint led to it, very important player on the invest inspector, general staff who just happened to be looking into the broader issue of civilian

casualties on the battlefield. right. so the, so this is at this army or sorry, this air force lawyer calls in to their hotline and says, this thing happened. i believe it's getting covered up. you need to take a look at it. and that report lands in the lab of a guy who had already been looking at this. there was a whole team over at the office of inspector general who had already been spent. i think that spent months already looking at problems with targeting and civilian casualty reporting in syria and iraq. and so right away that these evaluators were really receptive, they said great, let's go talk to this guy. they get on a plane, they go and talk to him in a secure location, and they come away with the same conclusion that the air force lawyer did, which is, holy smokes, something really bad here happened. it may have been a crime. and so regulations require that that if we have any,

any indication that it might be of the crime, we report it, we report it to the top, lawyers are that all the top authorities at the pentagon and we also report it to criminal investigation authorities. so he tells his bosses, hey, this happened were required to report, let's go forward and he runs into the same kind of road blocks, people stall, people, equivocate, and essentially, no one tells anyone anything. i got the sense from your reporting that there was sort of of fatigue. they are that it's so big, so voluminous, so much reporting people just didn't care anymore. is it? am i getting that right? i think you're right. i mean, i think what we've seen is kind of a numbness is set in over the 20 years of these kind of forever wars in place like gaston and iraq and syria. one of the other things we came across in the reporting was that the chaos level back is again the air command center in char. they were very suspicious of this task force. this task force 9 that the dave described this

special operations task force and included elements of the army elite delta force, as well as the fed special orsus group. and i started actually making a spreadsheet of some of these suspicious strikes that seem to involve civilian casualties. and this, this unit gains such notoriety on the ground that even the ca weighed in and complained about some of their strikes. so it took a lot even to overcome some of the numbness that i think is said in on the battlefield over all these years, where the military basically says, look, we are, we're trying our best. we're trying to use weapons that mitigate the risk to civilians. but you know, what, in a case like this from are battling isis when they're intermingled in a dense urban area like they were here. and unfortunately, sometimes casualties will happen. and that's kind of the mentality that's i think, set, hold in the military. but it's a different thing to say,

casualties happen and you had recorded statements from official saying we regret the loss of life. we will investigate. we will look into it, which sounds like something out of a routine playbook. but i think the bigger issue is the heroes inside who tried to do the right thing and ended up fired, ended up having their careers ended. so david, is this the meal i of this generation? well actually like i keep thinking about how similar it is to me lie because meal i happened and it was immediately reported. but the american public didn't learn about it till years later, because the military covered it up through the exact same type of official pencil whipping that we kind of saw in this area. they created reports that found that, you know, witnesses were, were not credible and things like this that actually made it disappear. and i think that there is a certain amount of fatigue in,

in this war. and i heard it from people i talked to who worked in the air force command center that they said, hey, look like civilians were getting killed. and, and, you know, if it was one or 2 deaths that were unfortunate in this, this war that we really felt needed to be prosecuted quickly and aggressively. we were okay with that. and i think it was the scale of this problem. and that something like this would not even be looked at. that was a red flag that you couldn't make a mistake like this in the same military that was assuring the public, hey we investigate these, we report on them. we'll let you know when we screw up and no one was actually doing it. eric, you know, washington very, very well. and i said, david, you do too. but i know eric walks the halls a congress. i seem around, you know, these folks is the oversight function of congress, culpable in this story? you know, you end the story with this tale of this mr. tate, who was trying through all different kinds of courses. and he sort of sitting there

as you n waiting for trying to get a phone call from senator jack reeds office in the and he said, i'm still waiting for that call. i just be interested from your set, an oversight side of this has them has at, you know, i, r is the u. s. senate is the us house of representatives. part of the cover up i don't know if they're part of the cover of steve, but certainly they could do much better in digging into this. i think on the hill, of course we're, we're doing the incredibly polarized environment. just as we are, as a nation as a whole, and i think the committees are focused in much, much of their kind of routine business. and so when something like this comes along and the senate armed services committee did interview some of the sources. we talked to, but it is we reported they really haven't followed up very aggressively office. and so i think they are couple culpable in this because congress plays in essential role. not only in financing the defense department, but in providing oversight for incidents just like this. and if they can't follow

up when people have the courage, like dean course anchorage in order to come forward and make these allegations with credible evidence that and preserve than shame on them, they need to be doing more. david, one of the things i felt reading through this piece, and i really highly recommended to every one i know, and i could feel how hard this piece was to report. this is not casual reporting, this is not opinion. this is deeply reported material in the national security space with lots of dimensions. i sort of felt like you had to sort of the woodward and bernstein of telling a, you know, very complex story. but i'd like to know and have our audience understand what the tectonics of this kind of reporting were. what came together, you had video, parts of this story that i thought were very interesting that were brought in. can you give us some of the topography of what you needed to do to report this story? sure, i, i mean, it starts as a lot of reporting does with a tip from somebody on the inside who had witnessed on some of the stuff that took

place and was outraged by it. and from there, of course, you face a lot of barricades because everything's classified as the freedom of information process doesn't really work. and no one will even tell you that certain things exist, let alone that you can't have them. and so a lot of it's very unsophisticated shoe leather reporting, trying to identify all of the people who might know something and, and approaching them all, you know, dozens and dozens of people come out to try and figure out sometimes someone would only wouldn't say anything to you but might confirm information to you that you might have figured out and so it was piecing that together. but then as you mentioned, we all, we have this amazing visual investigations team at the new york times. and i essentially went to them and said, here's where this happened. here's the coordinates in the time of the strike. tell me what you can tell me. and they came back with with you. they had found footage

from that day that appears to show the very striking question. they were able to pinpoint it using their own process. and it just led to sort of the immediacy of the, the reporting that you could see it. and in a lot of these images, you can see women and children are in the area before the strikes happen. i mean, it is amazing to sort of look at the, those clouds rising in the videos a lot. you know, just, you know, choreographed along with the writing as you told the story. what happened on eric, when you, when someone write a piece like this in drops, you know, essentially a journalistic bomb. as you have my, my experience is that lots of other stories begin to come in. other pieces, either that corroborate or are in conflict with the stories begin to come in and help fill out a broader context to the do degree. you're able, can you talk about other people within either the pentagon or the national

intelligence establishment or broadly out there that have able to bring you either, you know, more on this story or on other stories. will steve, you're right. obviously when you have a story like this, one of the goals is obviously to choose expenses to expose what happened initially . but then hope it emboldens others. we may have contacted to may not who may be reading about this for the 1st time to come forward. and all i would tell you, steve is stay tuned. i think there will be more in the story. so what are the next steps now? have you heard from senator jack reed, whom you've referenced in the piece, other senators are members of congress about what they are now going to take action . i guess the, the side piece is that is what are the implications if you need the mighty new york times to tell the story to get them to do their job. i, i just want to be in, in what kind of interaction you've had with these folks. well, we're still waiting for more reaction from the hill. senator read staff. it's is standing by the statement that they gave us for the original story. they're about

to start work on their big defense policy bill today in washington. so they're a little bit preoccupied. they tell me with that, but there'll be other investigations as well. going on, no doubt inside the inspector general's office. and of course, the pentagon. now we'll have to answer some questions from other members, the media as well as the new york times and what steps they're taking, both at the military command level, but also the pentagon. again, this is a different administration. this all happened on the trumpet ministration. so the civilian officials are different, but they still need to be held accountable for the policies and practices that are carrying over from the last administration. david, i want to ask you a question, hoping get it outright, but sort of a chain of command question. you wrote about eddie gallagher and in for audience eddie gallagher. i'll let you tell his story briefly, but as a complex guy, and you know that the, the system of justice within i of the navy, was not allowed to carry out what they thought was the appropriate punishment for some of his alleged war crimes. i happen to be with former secretary of the navy,

richard spencer the weekend. he was essentially fired and he had made a statement that a tweet from president trump didn't constitute a command in the chain of command. and then he called me later that night and said, steve, i guess i was wrong, a tweet is a command and, and he was fired. and so i'm interested in the wild lenise of the chain of command . i knew the eddie gallagher story. this is another chain of command story. we see stories about sexual assault against women and being told, hey, let the chain of command what are the problems as you see it in the so called chain of command narrative from the pentagon. right, so the story of eddie gallagher is the story of one art, navy seal chief, who's accused of killing women and children, and a and a p o w. while he was in iraq fighting isis. and that may seem like a very different story from an aaron ground strike that are air strike that,

that hit, you know, hundreds of miles away. right. but in a lot of ways, they're very similar because they reveal this cultural clash on any gallagher's men . decided to turn him in and report what they had seen and there were several steps along the way where the chain of command it seemed like tried to, to covered up not reported as required, quietly. so we've been under the rug and something similar is happening here. so you, you have these, these 2 classroom philosophies. one is, hey, look, we, we should wage war by no means that may go beyond what the regulations say and, and that's just life and, and when someone notices it don't say anything or other people who say, wait a minute. if, if we are not standing up for the rule of law, when we engage in this type are conflict, like what are we standing up for? and those 2 do different world views, i think right? will probably be at loggerheads forever. let me just ask you finally

eric, the implication the article as you wrote it was that i'm secretary lloyd austin. i should say it does was not aware of this that his deputy secretary, other folks at the highest loves of the pentagon had not been reported to now it's in the new york times. is there any action on that highest level there? are you still waiting to hear what the reaction from general austin is? or i should say, secretary or will again, what they'll say is this was, this did not happen on their watch, their civilian watch. and what they'll also say is that the poor any type of civilian casualties and they do whatever they can to mitigate the loss of civilian life on the battlefield. the secretary austin has just gone through his own episode, dealing with the findings of the august 29th strike. drones strike in kabul. afghanistan that killed 10 civilians including 7 children. and again, thanks to our colleagues and the visual investigations departments,

the reporting revealed that everything the military said about that strike has proved to be false. the assumptions they made about the driver being associated with isis about where he stopped in an isis a safe house about water canisters, in his car, been bombs. everything has been proven false. about this and yet. and yet, secretary austin so far has basically signed off on a subsequent review. they basically said, you know what, this was a strike much was to this strike was done in self defense under extenuating circumstances. that they did their best. but under pressure they made some mistakes . and so far, no one's been held accountable. no one was held accountable in the march 18th. 2019 strike either. and so i think we get to this issue, steve of accountability. yes, the accept responsibility? yes, they ex, express regret for these casualties. but where's the accountability down the roads? very infrequently the military hold,

somebody actually accountable in that sense of a punishment. some kind of reprimand, a rebuke for an incident like this. and so it would be interesting to see what happens going forward in terms of how the pentagon's leadership treats this issue more broadly. thank you gentlemen. new york times report is david phillips and eric schmidt. thanks so much for being with us today. thanks. thanks. so what's the bottom line? the post truth era for the u. s. military and national security apparatus really came years ago. ushered in by wiki leaks, and chelsea manning and edward snowden. before this decade, americans were raised to believe in the righteousness of the american military. other military is like in russia or china or iran, treat the truth like it's optional, but not in america. but today, no one is under the illusion that lies in cover ups don't happen all the time. instead, what stands out in the reporting of my guest today, or the heroes inside the pentagon, who tried to do the right thing. the more they sent their concerns up the chain of

command, the more they were punished while their bosses chose to hide the truth. but the more the military wing feels that it doesn't need to be bothered with pesky little things like the truth and moral responsibility and accountability and a rules based order. and the more it openly lies, the u. s. citizens and members of congress who are supposed to have oversight, the more that democracy is losing cause in america and around the world. that's the bigger problem. and that's the bottom line. ah, i care about shall be less engaging with the rest of the world. we're really interested in taking you into a play. you might not visit otherwise and feel as if you were there. can you hear anticipation, these lazy, excitements is growing. as cattle anyways, brings your favorite teen to cut off for the fee for arab comp 2021. greatness is

in the air. late sore is one and to reach new heights. join us in, cut off from november, the 30th to december. the 18th booked your package now at canada. i always dont calm lou ah hello, i'm marianne demising on the in just a quick update on our headlines this our poland is accused but a ruse of continuing to help asylum seekers cross into you territory. despite the battle russian authorities clearing a makeshift camp on the polish order on thursday, batteries, officials say that hundreds of people have moved voluntarily to reception center. west and board of the country were made essentially sealed off. thousands of people including women and children have been stuck in freezing can.