Skip to main content

tv   The Rachel Maddow Show  MSNBC  August 24, 2017 9:00pm-10:00pm PDT

9:00 pm
lot of places. during these days when millions of americans are enjoying a sunny sky and vacation, let us please remember all of our fellow americans in the path of this big storm. that is our broadcast for tonight. thank you for being here with us. good night from nbc headquarters in new york. big show tonight. lot going on. we are keeping a eye out on whether the president might make a extraordinary and early use of the pardon power to pardon convicted former arizona sheriff joe arpaio tonight. we've been getting mixed messages. the white house saying we don't expect a announcement on that soon but we're also told that the paperwork has been prepared already and the talking points have been distributed to white house surrogates in terms of how they should talk about that when it happens. so, the white house doesn't
9:01 pm
always speak fishily for the president in term of when he's going to do something and not. we have eyes on that. it would be a major controversy. we have news on a corruption scandal having to do with the new administration that may be getting pursued now by a unlikely investigator. we have that coming up just in a few minutes. we have a couple, a pair of national security stories, one of which may raise your spirits in a way. and one which probably will flip your stomach over several times. there's a lot going on. i want to start with something different. before we get to that news tonight. i want to start with something a little off the path. something that as far as i can tell is basically a open question and that is how i am
9:02 pm
raising it on the air tonight. i want to explain this thing that we as a country have all been able to figure out recently within the last couple days because of good investigative reporting by the new york times. the reason i want to talk about this part of it here is to plant a flag on this point, to clarify this thing that we've just learned, basically to raise a flag as to whether the open question i think is now raised can be answered. i at mid this is a little weird but bear with me. few years ago, a very wealthy russian lawmaker, a billionaire who was a russian lawmaker, he fled his country, left russia and came to the united states because he said he feared for his life. he said a close ally of russian president vurp, a russian oligarch close to putin had
9:03 pm
confiscated billions of dollars from him and when he sued the oligarch to get back his billions of dollars, the backlash was swift and scary. he says he was stripped of his immunity as a member of parliament, he was charged with fraud, what he says were trumped up fraud charges, he was put on russia's most wanted list. he said he was fearing for his life when he fled to the united states. and he started looking into the possibility of trying to get asylum in the united states. he also continued to press his legal case against the putin linked oligarch who he claimed stole all the billions of dollars from him. and if you have enough connections to steel billions of dollars from someone in russia, naturally you don't take kindly to somebody pursuing you to court. the putin connected oligarch who's accused of stealing the billions of dollars, the oligarch got to work doing everything he could to mess with
9:04 pm
this guy who he'd supposedly stolen all the money from, to mess with the fugitive russian lawmaker who was pressing the legal case against him, including, he mounted a campaign, a multifaceted campaign to try to black that fugitive lawmaker guy from getting asylum in the united states. and in order to accomplish that objective he hired a naturalized u.s. citizen, originally from russia, a guy with extensive ties with russian intelligence, and he was well known for being a effective pro putin, pro kremlin fixer and lobbyist in washington, d.c. that russian born d.c. fixer was hired to run a smear campaign against the russian lawmaker to the united states. he was hired to do the work, when it came time to get paid, the fixer guy admitted in court the way he got paid for the job was he was handed bags of
9:05 pm
hundred dollar bills, 70 or $80,000 at a time in a bag. nice work if you can get it. now, around the same time, the fugitive russian lawmakers is trying to get asylum in the united states, trying to save himself from a cash money smear campaign, and he's still pursuing his legal case against that guy to try to get his money back. and around the time that this smear campaign was starting up against him, led by this russian born d.c. fixer guy, his lawyers, who were working on his original case against the oligarch guy, their computers got hacked. the lawyers were based in london, they were sent suspicious e-mails that contained spyware, mall ware, luckily the infection e-mails looked suspicious enough to the
9:06 pm
lawyers that they called for help and took steps to protect themselves, they want today find out who came after them, who tried to infect their e-mails and access their servers, they hired for enix forensics experts could activate the mall ware sent to the lawyers, but then they fed traceable documents into the spyware, it would be like if you could get a gps troker on your stolen car so you could follow the stolen car to the chop shop, then you could bust the thesis who stole the cars and the car thieving operation. they put the traceable documents, and they traced them as the mal ware stole the documents, and when the traceable documents were opened up, the forensics experts could see where they were.
9:07 pm
where they got opened was on computers on the company of the putin connected oligarch hot lawyers were pursuing in court and who was funding the smear campaign against their client back in the united states. so, that was 2011. interesting case. then it happened again. couple years later, that russian born kremlin friendly d.c. fixer with ties to russian intelligence, the guy who ran the smear campaign that apparently involved this sophisticated hacking on the lawyers computers, that same fixer guy turned up working for another russian oligarch close to putin. this was in 2013. this one owned a mining company that was headquartered in europe. he hired the russian born d.c. fixer guy to go after a rival company in his company. he hired the fixer guy to go
9:08 pm
after a mining company called imr, and sure enough they got hacked. this time it worked. the company's internal documents got hacked, stolen, and then they turned up leaked far and wide to try to cause maximum damage to imr. the company sued the oligarch's company and also sued the russian born d.c. fixer guy who the oligarch had hired to manage his dispute with imr. they sued them. they sued them for computer espionage. a investigator working for the imr testified that he followed the d.c. fixer guy to a coffee shop in london. he saw him sit down with a person who appeared to be his client in this matter, imr, the investigator said he heard the
9:09 pm
fixer guy in the coffee shop explain to his client that his team had successfully hacked into the computers at imr, the investigator testified he saw the d.c. fixer guy hand over a thumb drive at the coffee shop that he said, thumb drive he said that contained the documents that had been stolen from imr, the documents that ended up getting leaked all over the place to hurt imr's business standing. okay. so, both of those hacking cases had been previously reported. they were interesting like, you know, business crime stories, right? but this week "the new york times" figured out that there's a crucial link between boat of those hacking stories. this d.c. fixer, the soviet born d.c. fixer with extensive russian intelligence ties in both of these instances he was hired by russian connected oligarchs for both of these
9:10 pm
campaigns and both of these campaigns opponents of the oligarchs found themselves victim of hacking attacks t-praek into the computers, steel the documents and use the documents geps them in these disputes. the fixer guy in d.c. is in the middle of both of those cases, and the m.o. looks very much the came in both of those cases. and his name is rinat akhmetshin. and in f that name is familiar it's because we know he's one of the people that went to that now famous meeting with donald trump junior and jared kushner and a kremlin connected lawyer as someone who could deliver damaging information from the russian government about hillary clinton. what was rin all akhmetshin about what he was doing in the meeting all these weeks later is
9:11 pm
funny. he maintains he happened to be having lunch that day with the kremlin connected lawyer, and she spontaneously almost as a lark invited him to come along, having no idea where he was going or why. he doesn't even live in new york, but mir ac cously there he was minding his own business when he ends up in a meeting starting right then in the executive sweet in trump tower with the president's son and son-in-law and the guy running the trump for president campaign. rinat come along, the more the merrier. have you met these guys? now we have no idea what he was really doing there, but we know more about his particular expertise, what he appears to be good at, what kind of services he has been able to offer the people who he has worked for over the years. there's no reason to think that rinat akhmetshin is the actual hacker. he's not the drone at a computer
9:12 pm
desk figuring out the code for the mal wear. what he appears to have done in the past for his clients that he's the guy who makes arrangements about this stuff. he's the guy who makes the arrangements for targeted hacking to happen, and for the material obtained by targeted hacking to be used to maximum benefit for his clients. he's apparently the one who ranges the hack and weapon eyeses whatever is stolen in the hack. who knows who his team is, who he has doing these hacks, but the time is added to our understanding of this part of the case is all the different ways in which rinat akhmetshin appears to be connected to russian intelligence. when the deputy head of russian intelligence had to come to washington to do a dog and pony show a few years ago, the guy who shepherded him around washington and went to the
9:13 pm
events with him was our friend the d.c. fixer, with the deputy head of russian intelligence. americans who came across him during his work said he openly alluded to his past involvement with russian intelligence, he did not make it a secret. he told journalists quite openly he had worked with russian military counter intelligence. he came across rinat akhmetshin frequently, he told the times he would boast about his times and experience in russian intelligence and counter intelligence. and there's the fact designed to infill trait their computers and steal their stuff, so their stuff could be used against them in those disputes. does this sound familiar? that guy turns up at this trump
9:14 pm
meeting just passing by. but that meeting on june 9th of last year, there's a couple of things very interesting about it. number one, and i don't know how to explain this at all, but that meeting ended up being very closely held. there are a lot of people in that meeting, a lot of russians, there was a trump, kushner and manafort in that meeting, it was a big meeting involving a lot of people, but it was quite closely held. not many people knew about it for a long time. we have reason to believe special counsel mueller don't appear to have figured out about that meeting on their own. all indications, mueller's team only looked into the meeting after it was reported in the new york times. how come they didn't know about it? also, former mi-6 agent christopher steele, for everything he figured out for the das yai, in his reporting,
9:15 pm
the dossier, he never mentioned the trump tower meeting. it's not in the dossier. he seems to have figured out a lot of other stuff. we also now know -- so that's interesting that it seems to have stayed under the ray car for so long. which is unusual, given the number of people in that meeting and who they were. but we also now know that by the time that meeting happened on june 9th, the dnc, the democratic party and clinton campaign had already been hacked by russian hackers. now if you put the timeline back together, you can now see that once the democrats had had their servers hacked and all their documents stolen, that's when the senior leadership of the trump campaign took the meeting with the guy who has extensive known experience in exactly that kind of hacking, this guy who has years of experiencing, arranging the stealing of and
9:16 pm
weaponizing of hacked information for russian political purposes. the day after the trump tower meeting, the weekend of june 10 and 11, that's when the dnc and their it consultants finally kicked out the russian hackers. we don't know why they did it at that moment except at that time they were preparing to go public with what happened to them. indeed the following week it went public. that's when we all learned for the first time that the russians had hacked the dnc servers when the washington post reported on it. the day after that story broke, the russians started leaking some of what they hacked, then the full been sation of that hacked information started in july with the wikileaks dump timed perfectly to coincide with the start of the democratic national convention. now we know who was in the meeting and we know what we know about that timing.
9:17 pm
so here's my question. now that we know more about who was in the room with the trump campaign, in that interim period between when the democratic party was hacked and when the russians started turning the product of that hack back at the u.s. election and the u.s. immediate to help trump and hurt clinton, now that we know that a russia born d.c. fixer who apparently specialize nd that kind of work was meeting with the upper esh lawns of the trump campaign right then, how can we tell if there's a connection, is there a connection between the operative being at the meeting with that specific expertise under his belt, is there a connection between that and the russian attack on the dnc and the clinton campaign and how the documents hacked out of the clinton campaign got repurposed to hurt hillary clinton. does rinat akhmetshin's
9:18 pm
proximity to these previous occasion map with what happened to the dnc last year between timing, tactics, with the way the operation ran. is it the same fingerprints in all three? we're pretty sure he's associated with the first two, and we know about the third one and it looks the same. are the fingerprints the same on all three? rinat akhmetshin would not answer our questions when we reached out to them. but you know what, all of this should be answerable, certainly by trained investigators, but i'm thinking in open research and journal is tick work here, there's a bunch of news to get to. but stick a pin in this story, in that meeting, that time frame, specifically into that guy. who's going to be the first to figure this part out? but why? you haven't noticed me in two years. i was in a coma. well, i still deserve appreciation.
9:19 pm
who was there for you when you had amnesia? you know i can't remember that. stop this madness. if it's appreciation you want you should both get snapshot from progressive. it rewards good drivers with big discounts on car insurance. i have news. i've used most of our cellular data. come on, susan lucci! ♪ theso when i need to book tant to mea hotel room,tion. i want someone that makes it easy. booking.com gets it. and with their price match, i know i'm getting the best price every time. visit booking.com. booking.yeah! if you have moderate to severe ulcerative colitis or crohn's, and your symptoms have left you with the same view, it may be time for a different perspective. if other treatments haven't worked well enough, ask your doctor about entyvio, the only biologic developed and approved just for uc and crohn's. entyvio works by focusing right in the gi-tract to help control damaging inflammation
9:20 pm
and is clinically proven to begin helping many patients achieve both symptom relief as well as remission. infusion and serious allergic reactions can happen during or after treatment. entyvio may increase risk of infection, which can be serious. while not reported with entyvio, pml, a rare, serious brain infection caused by a virus may be possible. tell your doctor if you have an infection, experience frequent infections, or have flu-like symptoms, or sores. liver problems can occur with entyvio. if your uc or crohn's medication isn't working for you, ask your gastroenterologist about entyvio. entyvio. relief and remission within reach. you don't let anything lkeep you sidelined. come on! that's why you drink ensure. with 9 grams of protein, and 26 vitamins and minerals... for the strength and energy, to get back to doing what you love. ensure, always be you.
9:21 pm
hey you've gotta see this. cno.n. alright, see you down there. mmm, fine. okay, what do we got? okay, watch this. do the thing we talked about. what do we say? it's going to be great. watch. remember what we were just saying? go irish! see that? yes! i'm gonna just go back to doing what i was doing. find your awesome with the xfinity x1 voice remote.
9:22 pm
well jared kushner left his family's real estate company to go work for his father-in-law at the white house, the kushner company of course kept on going without him. they have made some changes since he's been away. most recently there's new reporting that the kushner companies have just hired a new team to handle their public and media relations. they've hired a big firm that specializes in crisis and issues management. you know the gigantic multibillion dollar scandal over volkswagen systematically cheating on emissions testing for their diesel cars? remember that? the kushner real estate company just hired them, the crisis management people who handle that disaster, they'll now be working for the kushners. we don't know what precipitated that decision, but there are
9:23 pm
things going on. the reporting that jared's family dangling his name to lure chinese people, the kushners in exchange for the u.s. government to give those people -- have already gotten dinged for that. they've been served up a federal subpoena for promising visas for the chinese investors. there's the skyscraper that is in serious urgent need of new cash investor if the kushners are going to pay off the loan they took out to buy the building. that search for urgent new money to cover that building, that's involving discussions with a shadowy chinese company and the source of questions of why jared kushner took that company with a putin connected russian banker during the transition and then kept that meeting a secret before finally disclosing it months later.
9:24 pm
the bank said at the time they were there to discuss business with jared. the white house says no no no, that definitely wasn't it. there's also a very large loan from deutsche bank. mr. kushner reportedly personally guaranteed the loan himself, which makes it extra weird that he didn't report it on his financial disclosure. but what jared kushner used that deutsche bank money for was to buy another property from a soviet born businessman they called the king of diamonds. the king of diamonds described widely as being very close to russian president vladimir putin. there's detail recent reporting on the kushner companies doing hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate investing in manhattan with money provided by the steinmetz family. their money is tied up in at
9:25 pm
least four countries including the united states because of allegations of bribery and money laundering. that family quite recently put a lot of money in the kushner family accounts all in a short period of time. so it's widely believed that one of the ways that special council robert mueller is driving this investigation into this trump-russia affair is building from the ground up, building detailed profiles and financial profiles specifically of the various people who may be close to the scandal. presumably to figure out if there is any criminal liability for the figures in the scandal that could be used to either just indict them or persuade them to be more forth coming with the investigators about what they might know about the trump campaign and russia. if you were building one of those files on jared related to his family and their company, well, given what's recently been in the news about that family
9:26 pm
company, you might reasonably expect that the kushner company would be hiring new big guns in crisis management as they did today. if you're robert mueller though, if this is what's inside your toolkit right now for a figure like jared kushner in this scandal, are you likely to get what you need? what else do you need to be able to proceed along this strategy, how do you get it and how long does it take. joining us an msnbc contributor. barbara, thank you for being here tonight. really appreciate it. >> thanks, rachel. my pleasure. >> it is widely believed that the robert mueller investigation is proceeding in this ground up way, building profiles of people involved or associated with the matter being investigated. and the idea, from those of us outside it looking at it is that presumably they'll try to use any criminal liability they find to pressure people into becoming cooperating witnesses. that's what we understand from just watching spy movies and
9:27 pm
reading detective novels. in the real word is that how prosecutors approach those things? >> yes, following the money is a common tactic. first is the threshold matter, the department of justice cousin not go on fishing expeditions to get people. you have to have a predication. but based on all of the things that we know about kushner's involvement in that june 2016 meeting, about his meeting with the russia bank, his request for a secret back channel or communication, there's predication to look at him. so one of the common tactics is to follow the money together as many documents, records as you can to try to put together a financial profile to see what money is coming in and what is going out. >> when we see what was reported today with the kushner family, their real estate company hiring big guns on crisis management, a kind of public relations, does that sort of thing -- again, in the real world, the way that people manage their public
9:28 pm
image, the way they pursue press coverage that's more favorable to them, does that affect the course of the investigation? is that good defense for somebody who might be under that scrutiny? >> i think when you're someone like jared kushner who is in the public eye, you have to be operating in two arenas. you have to defend yourself in the legal arena but of course you are also out there in the court of public opinion as well. so i think bring in a crisis management team like that is to work on that bigger strategy. >> and with so many desperate issues here that may or may not be involved in the central question that robert mueller is looking at, when you describe there having to be some kind of predication for what you look at, by that do you mean there has to be a direct connection between any crimes that you come across in the course of your investigation and the initial cause of the investigation? when they start looking at financial matters associated with paul manafort or michael flynn or jared kushner or any of
9:29 pm
these other figures, does it have to relate to russia, russian coercion of american figures, russian involvement in attacking the election or can it be a second and third level connection? >> yeah, i think especially in light of robert mueller's broad mandate here, it can be more secondary. remember, he's looking at whether there are connections between russia and the campaign but he may look at any matter that arise or may arise from that investigation. so putting together a financial investigation and then following those things to their logical conclusion is part of his mandate. >> former u.s. attorney in michigan, really appreciate your time tonight. thanks for being here. >> thanks very much. >> we got much more ahead tonight. ♪ hey, is this our turn? honey...our turn? yeah, we go left right here.
9:30 pm
(woman vo) great adventures are still out there. we'll find them in our subaru outback. (avo) love. it's what makes a subaru, a subaru. get 0% apr financing for 63 months on all new 2017 subaru outback models. now through august 31.
9:31 pm
and you look amazing...lyt dates.comfortable.azing. when your v-neck looks more like a u-neck... that's when you know it's half-washed.
9:32 pm
add downy to keep your collars from stretching. unlike detergent alone, downy conditions to smooth... ...and strengthen fibers. so, don't half-wash it. downy and it's done.
9:33 pm
until last week when he until last week when he unceremoniously quit in a big surprise, until last week billionaire investor carl ichan was special adviser to the president on regulatory reform. he was named to that past last year. and a funny thing happened around that time he got that karl ike juan started betting on a part of the market while he was offering regulatoriy advise on that part of the market. he appeared to be doing things as special adviser to the president to bring about that very thing he said would happen. last friday, he suddenly
9:34 pm
resigned, moments there after, literally moment later this report was reported by the new yorker manage seen how karl ikon used his position in the trump administration to drive costs down and the stock of his company up. the white house defense in the white house lawyer was to deny that carl icahn had ever had to job in the first place. carl icahn? private citizen, nothing to do with us. if you are thinking if smacks of banana rememberic corruption, it does. we showing with the department of ethics. he sent up a emergency flair. most pointedly, who's going to police this. arguably this kind of situation is why we have a public integrity section at the department of justice, but if this particular department of
9:35 pm
justifies doesn't feel like pursuing, there may be another possibility. it may not be a federal matter. it is a financial matter. it involves a market, a refinery carl icahn owns, a business interests of this particular adviser, when it comes to financial crime, prosecutors from new york state have been known to bring all sorts of things that involve the financial markets that don't seem like new york cases otherwise. previous new york ag's, were known as pit bulls when it came to pursuing white color and financial crime. will the current a.g. take up the case? we've asked eric schneiderman's office that. they told us it is on our raider, quote. that's all they were tell us, but that's what they told us, on our radar, duel noted.
9:36 pm
watch this space. ♪
9:37 pm
if you've got a life, you gotta swiffer
9:38 pm
your privacy makes you myt number 1 place to go number 2. i love you, but sometimes you stink.
9:39 pm
febreze air effects doesn't just mask, it cleans away odors. because the things you love the most can stink. and try febreze small spaces to clean away odors for up to 30 days. breathe happy with febreze. and life's beautiful moments.ns get between you flonase outperforms the #1 non-drowsy allergy pill. it helps block 6 key inflammatory substances that cause symptoms. pills block one and 6 is greater than 1. flonase changes everything. here's a word i did not know before today. lanthanum. it's lanthanum, i think. it's an element, number 57 on the periodic table. has the enviable abbreviation l.a. it comes out of the ground looking like a silver lump. it's soft. you can cut it with a knife. you may have some of this in your pocket already.
9:40 pm
they use this to make the flint that sharks the flame. you can find it in russia, nigh china and afghanistan. they have a ton of it in the ground. afghanistan is believed to have billions of tons of unmined elements and minerals. unmined, unexploited, unmonetized. and our new president has now said that basically he'd like to make a little money off of those minerals. we've been hearing rumblings about this for a few weeks that the president wants to use the fact that the president continues to be at war in afghanistan for the justification of the united states making a grab for the untapped mineral resources of that country for ourselves. that was the rumor that had been reported as a subject of discussion in white house meetings as of a few weeks ago. but then we got this monday in the president's speech.
9:41 pm
>> as the prime minister of afghanistan has promised, we are going to participate in economic development to help defray the cost of this war to us. >> to us. just in case you might -- you're confused there for a second. you thought this economic development pursuits might be for afghanistan since it's their stuff. no. it's for us. when we heard the president say that on monday night, nobody was totally sure what he meant but everybody cynically guessed that what he meant was that the u.s. would going to start looting afghanistan for its man rales to defray the cost of the war to us. in this case, politico.com is reporting that not only does the president want afghan's minerals for the united states, he's put somebody in charge of it, wilbur ross, in charges of making the mineral looting magic happen after being intrigued with a conversation he had with the afghan president about
9:42 pm
afghanistan's huge mineral reserves. a senior white house said that the president tasked with wilbur ross with this duty. investment opportunities in this case meaning we want to dig up your stuff and sell it for us to keep the money. this seems to me -- i know that it was mentioned elliptically in the president's remarks, but it's clear what he meant which means the story deserves more attention than it's getting. digging up a country's resources in wartime taking it for yourself with it's an old idea and it's not that the way that americans believe we conduct our wars, regardless of political party. the president said on the campaign trail that we ought to take iraq's oil to reimburse ourselves for the war we started over there. he stopped saying that about iraq. he's saying that about afghanistan and sending wilbur
9:43 pm
ross to figure it out. it's hard to tell for sure but it looks like the white house is sirius about this and acting on it and it's almost nowhere in the news. i'm not sure why that is. but hold that thought. lligence.. ...it's a supercomputer. with this grade of protection...it's a fortress. and with this standard of luxury...it's an oasis. the 2017 e-class. it's everything you need it to be...and more. lease the e300 for $569 a month at your local mercedes-benz dealer. mercedes-benz. the best or nothing. year with the new sleep number 360 smart bed. it senses and automatically adjusts on both sides. the new 360 smart bed is part of our biggest sale of the year where all beds are on sale. and right now save 50% on the labor day limited edition bed, plus free home delivery. ends saturday!
9:44 pm
you're searching for something. whoooo. like the perfect deal... ...on the perfect hotel. so wouldn't it be perfect if... ....there was a single site... ...where you could find the... ...right hotel for you at the best price? there is. because tripadvisor now compares... ...prices from over 200 booking... ...sites ...to save you up to 30%... ...on the hotel you want. trust this bird's words. tripadvisor. the latest reviews. the lowest prices.
9:45 pm
not necessarily after 3 toddlers with boundless energy. but lower back pain won't stop him from keeping up. because at a dr. scholl's kiosk he got a recommendation for our best custom fit orthotic to relieve his foot, knee, or lower back pain, from being on his feet. by reducing shock and stress on his body with every step. so look out world, dad's taking charge. dr. scholl's. born to move.
9:46 pm
top american diplomatic position for afghanistan an pakistan is called the special representative for afghanistan and pakistan. it was the top position for that part of the world in american diplomacy until june. there was no announcement about
9:47 pm
this at all, but in june the diplomat who was holding that position, laurel miller, she learned without warning that the state department was shutting down that office. without making a public announcement and without telling anybody, including the staff who was work in that office at the time. joining us now is laurel miller to until this june was the acting special representative to afghanistan and pakistan. she's a senior policy expert at the rand corporation. thank you for being with us. >> my pleasure. >> there was no announcement from the administration that they were shutting down your office but they did close up shop in june? >> well my appointment was expiring. and with the expiration of my appointment, they did close down the office. the duties have been handed over to someone else. but there is no separate office dedicated to focusing just on afghanistan and pakistan any longer. >> and that is happening at a time when obviously there's
9:48 pm
renewed attention and a new announcement from the president in terms of america's approach to afghanistan and pakistan. this hasn't been the focus of a lot of other news coverage but i want to get your reaction to what appears to be a new plan by the president to go after afghanistan's mineral wealth for the benefit of the united states. i just wanted to get your take on that. >> yeah. i think it's potentially harmful to our national security interests just for american officials to be talking about this. i don't expect that very much will actually come of this initiative because of the practical obstacles to pursuing this. but afghanistan and its wider region is a place that is rife with conspiracy theories. and there are many conspiracy theories about what the real intentions of the united states
9:49 pm
are in afghanistan. and unfortunately i think that the proposition that the united states should be, for its own benefit, participating in extracting minerals from afghan stan feeds right into those conspiracy theories. >> depending on how you count, there's between 8500 and 12,000 american service members serving in afghanistan. the president appears to be increasing that number by several thousand. he also talked about changing essentially the rules of engagement for lack of a better terms in terms of what combatant commanders can order without permission from higher level authorities. all of that would imply that american service members there are going to be in different kinds of contact, and increased contact with afghan combatants and civilians. if this happens or with the administration talking about doing this, does it conceivably put american soldiers more at risk in terms of the environment
9:50 pm
in which they're serving? >> that specific scenario is hard to judge, but i would say that this idea creates an excellent propaganda talking point for the taliban. because it will enable the taliban to reinforce the narrative that the afghan government is a puppet regime of the united states and entable the taliban to suggest that the united states isn't really in afghanistan because of the national security interests that we've long asserted and that are the actual reason for being there, but because we're looking to gain some benefit for america, financial, economic benefit from afghanistan, which is still one of the poorest countries in the world. there's also the potential for this idea to be damaging to the afghan government if it's seen
9:51 pm
as selling out afghan resources that should be for the benefit of the afghan people to america. and that could have further destabilizing effect on what's already a chronically weak government. >> laura miller former acting -- now policy expert at the rand corporation. thank you for being here tonight and will you please come back and talk to me about these issues in the future. i feel like we could benefit from hearing more from you. >> i'd be happy to. >> one more story, a decades old mystery that has been solved in a moving way. ♪ music
9:52 pm
edible arrangements for summer. order in store or online.
9:53 pm
just turn on cars.coms on tprice dropswant? and get real-time notifications that could help save you money. use cars.com and save. when i was too busy with the kids to get a repair estimate. i just snapped a photo
9:54 pm
and got an estimate in 24 hours. my insurance company definitely doesn't have that... you can leave worry behind when liberty stands with you™ liberty mutual insurance. 2004 marine corps praul was on patrol with his unit in iraq, corporal dun am throw himself on a grenade to save his fellow marines. he became only the second u.s. service member and the first u.s. marine awarded the medal of honor for the iraq war. two months later in march 2007 the u.s. navy announced a new guided missile destroyer would be name the u.s.s. dun um, this is the ship. it is in service now and it likely will be for a very long time to come.
9:55 pm
u.s.s. jason dun um has that meaningful name for the meanful reason but it's going to in the navy as ddg 109, can you see that on the hull. all navy ships have unique identifying numbers like that. this is the george h.w. bush, i've liked the photo of president bush laurg the top of the aircraft carrier, the 77, with the lights coming down, it is the cvn 77 in the navy, it's several stories tall, on the aircraft carrier, if you look in the lower right hand corner of the picture laes a giant 77 painted on the flight deck. the navy does it for all their ships. here's the uss albany being commissioned as a attack submarine, you see the cc 753 here. they started assigning unique
9:56 pm
numbers to its ships in the 1800s, every one of them gets a name, oftentimes a moving and meaningful name but the idea was to simplify the unique identifiers. it's to identify what kind of ship the ship is and the number mols. for the class of ship called a cruiser, it's called a guided missile cruiser, they have numbers that start with cg, before we had guided missile cruisers, we had armored cruisers, and their unique number started with ca. armored cruiser, a crucial part of the navy's fleet in world war ii. in 1945, one of these armored cruiser, the ca 35, you can see it, it got orders to make its way to the island in the march yawn aus, they were due to make a important delivery. but it was so secret the captain and his crew didn't know what
9:57 pm
they were delivering. unbee noensed to the captain and the crew, what they had on board were parts and enriched uranium for the bomb. the captain and crew didn't know. they're cargo and route was secret. not many people knew where the ca 35 was going or where it was on any particular day was of the secretaririsy of its mission. it arrived in the mayor yawn aus, and they turned around and started to make their way to the philippines. the cruiser had 1200 men on board and a japanese sup found them and hit the ship with two torpds, crippled the trip, the order to abandon ship couldn't be put in a amplified way, that cruiser with 1200 men on board sank in 12 minutes.
9:58 pm
of the 1200 men on board, 400 of them died in the initial attack, that left 800 men in the water. with only about a dozen small rafts between them. very dire circumstances. drinking water, exhaustion, exposure, shark attacks, the men who survived floated out there for five days with nothing. and no one came to rescue them because when the cl a 35 went ounce, nobody had any idea it had sunk. there were no communications from the ship. they'd been on a secret mission where nobody knew where they were, it was only almost five days later when a bomber pilot happened to see a oil slick in the water, he buzzed lower, he called in a rescue. by the time the rescue name only 316 men were left alive. it was the navy's worst disaster
9:59 pm
at see. 72 years gone by, of the 316 survivors that day, only 19 of them are still with us. a wreckage of the ca 35 was never found until this week. finally. the proof they finally found it after all these years was when they saw the number on the hull. yup. they saw the 35. that's it. this is the uss indianapolis, the ca 35, more than three miles down in the philippine sea. you can see a gun barrel, there's a spare float from one of the planes on board, there's a duel 45 millimeter gun, it $. was research by air -- three miles down, far from where anybody thought it was 70 years later. but what a solemn thing given the number of then who died on
10:00 pm
board and what their last mission was before they were hit. and this news this week comes at a emotional time any way for the navy. it suspended the search at sea for the sailors missing from the no mention of those sailors or . it's interesting, the ship's exact location remains classified. they're continuing to survey the site, what's there, it's being treated as a war grave, a