the mercy we're coming live out of washington d.c. now today wiki leaks has struck at the heart of american military might with the leak of over ninety thousand pages of classified documents on the troubled war in afghanistan the web site seems to have more power than ever and at the helm of the operation is julian assange but who is this mysterious man and what does he stand for and is the latest wiki leaks leak too big and just to shocking for the mainstream media to handle we've heard the league debated all over the networks but does it matter is the war in afghanistan still simply too big to fail next we'll look at veterans across the country that are being let down by the country that they risk their lives to protect why isn't the nation so enamored with war is letting the very people who fought those wars go hungry archie producer among the lindo of bring us that story then the federal deficit will hit an all time high this year and a quarter of the white house this is just going to continue for years to come so

with deficits exploding with no end in sight how long before we will have to pay the piper and next is affirmative action necessary to ensure equality in america with a great recession in full swing many in poor white america are starting to wonder if they're the ones that are being discriminated against so we'll have a debate on that issue and we'll speak to an independent candidate for the state assembly from wisconsin the state has banned her from using her campaign slogan which is not the white man's bitch now they say that this is pejorative but she says it's otherwise but now it's move on to our top story tonight. six months ago the name julian assange might not have rung any bells i interviewed him here in the studio in april after the release of the collateral damage video showing an air attack in baghdad in which twelve civilians were killed. now after that video the world slowly started paying attention to the mysterious australian man and his nation less internet organization well today as saunders the co-founder of wiki

leaks is on the front page of every paper being discussed on every news channel thanks for this leak of more than ninety thousand internally military documents detailing the war in afghanistan r.t. producer lucy coffin of gives us a deeper look at the leak itself and the reactions from within the government. it is a bleak portrait of america's nine year war in afghanistan the massive leak of secret u.s. military files brought to light by the whistle blowing website wiki leaks the amount of information is shocking in scope if not in content nearly ninety two thousand documents that paint a devastating image of a war that shows little signs of letting up these are the war logs the initial efforts by news organizations to make sense of the wiki leaks goldmine much of the information simply expands on what was already known covert military units hunting down militants without trial hundreds of civilians killed covered up by the

military pakistani officials aiding the taliban and al qaida and a growing insurgency that has not been quelled by u.s. efforts wiki leaks founder julian assange says he hopes the information will help change u.s. war policy we can see that some material has potential. human rights reform and this is one of those cases so we put in a little bit of extra effort to try and get to the truth. so the united states a spends more than three hundred billion dollars on the war in afghanistan a conflict that has claimed the lives of more than one thousand u.s. troops and still the lead comes at a particularly bad time for this white house as it struggles to maintain support for an unpopular war amid growing questions about the third. besides being war has the potential to be very harmful to. those that. you know our military those that

are cooperating with our military and those that. are working to keep us already rumblings on capitol hill indicate that the leaks may indeed affect u.s. war policy the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee john kerry issued a statement saying that the leak raises serious questions about the reality of america's policy towards pakistan and afghanistan it will take weeks if not months to go through all of the information to piece together the on the ground details of the afghan war for now the leak one of the largest in military history leaves all too many questions unanswered you seek out from the washington. well this is actually here in the studio with me now to discuss this a little further now we see it like you are saying it's going to take weeks perhaps months to pore over all the information that's in these ninety thousand pages there but what i really want to talk about is about the man that really is at the head of

all of this who you know we i've interviewed him here on the show you yourself have corresponded with him extensively i mean what do you make of him what who do you think doing the songes well he's a lot harder to get in touch with now i'll tell you that he's a really interesting guy and you know you sort of have to be when you're kind of living out of your backpack traveling around the world trying not to get caught by the various governments aren't too pleased that you're publishing secret information about them he has been incredibly helpful to our team coverage when the collateral murder video first came out was very instrumental in getting in touch with us giving us information in the middle of the night usually these her e-mail saying that he was on the run but here is this x. y. and z. information and you know it's interesting to see how julian's figure in the media has evolved from the time that the collateral murder video came out to now i mean when julian came out with this video. back i think was a few months ago it was i think r.t.d. and al-jazeera interviewed him it took the mainstream media what like three days to

actually get the guy on the air and figure out that there's this big story happening here that you can't ignore anymore so it's interesting to see how now he's sort of dominating all of the headlines you saw in the beginning of my package we shot footage of all of these local papers that had this of the top story you know it's no longer this secretive thing that the mainstream media is afraid to touch but we were there first you know i mean he's going to be on larry king live tonight what a change i agree because you know april fifth the david he released the interview or the apache helicopter video of the national press club he was over here within about an hour and. a very very interesting man seemed very closed off very shy now is going to be on larry king live now he's everywhere now the mainstream media is just stepping all over themselves to be the first ones to speak to him which to me it's interesting because do you feel like perhaps he is a person to his character now is eclipsing the documents that are being released information the videos that are getting out there you know in some ways i think that is the case but we sort of always see that with media where sometimes the

figure is more important than the story i mean look at the broader thing that he's trying to do with these leaked documents i mean it's not like he leaks something so astounding that we didn't have any inkling of this before i mean we knew that the pakistani intelligence officers were not necessarily the best allies for the united states we knew that there were certain murders that were covered up you know the sort of just puts out more information out there for us to dig through but what i think it will do is sort of focus the media on the conflict itself which they're really a little reluctant to do i mean look we see all these stories about who is julian you know what does he do what is his agenda we've been in this conflict for about nine years now and there's no sort of coherent coverage of the conflict itself it's all about the personalities and that's a little bit troubling now do you think that if we the government is supposedly after him like you said every time he writes you he's a. running from dodging the u.s. now that this is been released now there's ninety thousand more pages detailing this war do you think they're really going to go after him and how hard are they

going to hunt so it's a strange story because i remember last time we heard that the government was after him he tweeted that he was going to be speaking at a panel in the vatican so they could have easily going to show up but i remember some our t.v. viewers were getting mad at me as if i tattle don and i pretty sure the government knows how many check his twitter feed i think they're probably frustrated that you know this kind of information is getting out there but at the same time i read somewhere that julian said that pentagon officials had offered to meet with him in some sort of neutral place to discuss what other information he may be holding holding back because there are some more documents he has yet to publish he said that he has not agreed to this i mean we'll just have to see the guy is good getting around and being noticed too much and apparently is capable of slipping through here and there so i think you'll be you will be able to make out i don't know these days he's not really slipping through and maybe he wants the media attention who i think will have to you know continue following this is that unfolds and what's the most interesting part of it off course is that he's not american so

it can't be all that matter i guess are those loose enough for our team producer filling us in now like i mentioned the last time the wiki leaks had this big release it took the mainstream media days to catch on and the debate was about whistleblowers whether they're a friend or a foe to the people and this time around everyone's talking about this story they're desperately trying to understand what the documents really me. we have people here at c.n.n. still reading through these documents trying to glean the information but just just at a glance you see some of the information about the intelligence about how the taliban . when i was reading this i wrote here on the side now was recruitment it was shown as like like like like. the big now the problem here is if rick sanchez didn't make it obvious enough. is the mainstream media really out live that should be poring through these documents and trying to figure out what it all means that say

mainstream media that rarely questions military spending and america's and lives or is abroad the i'm not so sure and yet for some reason wiki leaks came to them with these documents so what gives here to discuss it with me is christopher chambers georgetown university professor and author of the blog turner's revenge chris great to have you as always. wiki leaks they are this renegade underground websites i guess you can leave the underground affair website but you know what i mean and here they are now giving these documents to the new york times to the guardian der spiegel or i think they did that well i mean they are kind of the the outlaws i mean and that's the fits julian's personality i mean he's my my mission in life is to crush bastards whatever that means and he said that interview public record but he still needs these major outlets to stablish i guess the gravity of something or the the connection to the past because you know what he's doing really

is new what's new and motivations what's new is how this is being done he's basically now a wholesaler for the mainstream media and an agent if you will and you know so he's putting this stuff out there building the buzz on the internet on this virtual world out here but he's still relying on the old dinosaurs because the dinosaurs give him a sense of belonging you know he's part he's basically the bird that's descended from the dinosaurs but he still needs that connection to the dinosaurs to keep that info flowing to keep him self important in the eyes of the world otherwise you just be an outlaw well that i mean if you want maximum exposure i guess you go to the new york times because the new york times whatever they put out is the story in the morning that's going to dictate what the news cycle is going to be on t.v. that day but it is so interesting the way you mention it that now julian assigned has so much power because yes whistleblowers will no longer leaked documents to the

mainstream media outlets they give them to wiki leaks and so now it's up to this one man to pick and choose what he's going to put out here is the problem and i think that so because with the new york times you're spiegel i mean there used to really vetting the information because you know you don't in the first instance you basic tenet of our first. and all over the world you don't want the government or any government making those decisions is as to what you're going to put out but who is this guy is he being transparent nobody really knows who he has got and iceland is bouncing around when he puts he basically is farming that venting out to the traditional dinosaurs because they're good at that but at the same time look at this power yes he is when you have an outlaw on your side and you're thinking about leaking you know you're going to you're going to go with the law because he's a little bit more free wheeling because psychologically you might think this guy look at him he's on larry king though he was nothing before i mean

a martini discovered a zero has been using you know but now he's like all over the place i want to go with the outlaw because you have to be a bit of an outlaw unless you've got a chip on your shoulder to be a whistle blower in the first place we have part of that is for example if you look at you know their twitter website their location is everywhere and so a lot of people are calling wiki leaks this first stateless news organization because they have no affiliation with any one nation's interests so you're going to go to him because he can't be perhaps tried under the government for revealing these national. you might be but i mean i think you know psychologically there's a connection there with that kind of outlaw mentality and there's something there something new about if the government tries to make the new york times reveal the source their source is going to julian assange and not where i think the government's a little bit more of a grain of the new york times in these you know and likewise there spiegel the guardian you know depend on their home governments are

a little bit more afraid of messing with them than with julian but julian's a moving target it's almost like john the john dillon tour of the media in the twenty first century becomes a folk hero still an outlaw but people will will will not aspire to him but. the thought that being strange kinship with this guy that they might not with the times but you know you say if the government perhaps might be afraid to go. after the new york times and these big media organizations but are there just as afraid to go after the government they're just as afraid well that a majority of the time to question anything so you know in some sense i feel like maybe things are lost now because you have these ninety thousand pages right so much information i had does the media even know how to handle that although maybe they didn't they didn't really know how to use the pentagon papers which is a kind of an example in the past i mean there was all of this rigamarole about the pentagon papers we got to jail daniel ellsberg he's on these enemies list but when they came out they really didn't change things i mean it was almost like this

julian knows that it doesn't really change the policy because when the stuff comes out. so you know the president's not going to say oh my god the information comes out i'm going to have to change policy it's almost like a drop in the bucket the war is over the leak itself not what's being leaked we kind of all do what are you said pakistan's kind of. in this and that the other thing this is people in the seventy's knew that the vietnam war was a little shady and there was some weirdness going on well i'm just worried that enough people won't really take into account just the this should really just make you get it doesn't pages where it should i don't know if well chris thanks so much for being there you now. talking about the subject actually you see we took a broad look today at the rise of wiki leaks at the character of the mysterious white haired australian julian a songe and we asked how this renegade website that has changed journalism has even

started playing field acting as the middleman between the whistleblowers and between the mainstream news outlets but tomorrow tomorrow i really want to take an in-depth look at what exactly is in those more than ninety thousand pages and what they say about the war in afghanistan the white house was so quick to condemn this release today as was general james jones they said that the disclosure of this classified information could put the lives of americans or partners at risk and could threaten national security but is that really the case or have they just released ninety thousand pages worth of stories that only reaffirm what we already know the drones aren't as effective as the military claims they are of the taliban still using stinger missiles which the u.s. helped secure during their war against the soviet union in the eighty's the pakistan wasn't always willing to play ball and that corruption and mistrust are leading this war effort now where the afghan people do not trust the government of

hamid karzai the man that we put in power that they don't trust the police forces that americans are. trying to train because they steal they abuse their power and a lot of times they defect to the taliban and that american tax dollars are funding warlords honestly i haven't yet been able to find too much that shocks me in all these pages but that doesn't mean that those who don't follow the wars as closely as i do won't so does this really put national security at risk because the white house wants to claim or could this hopefully hopefully force some honest discourse on this war will get us all of those details tomorrow now still to come on tonight's show homeless vets it's a growing issue we've got a report on the problem and why some homeless vets are saying that the government isn't doing enough to help them and the word deficit is a hot topic this campaign season but does this white house and or the chronographs have the will or the courage to actually do something about it we'll look into the

issue in just a few minutes. to . be soo much brighter if you knew me by phone from finance to mention some. stocks on t.v. dot com. abandoned by the very

nation they risked their lives for thousands of american military veterans are going to sleep in the streets tonight many of them say that their government could have helped void homelessness r.t. as ramon glendon takes a look at this problem. beyond san diego's picturesque eyeline lies an ugly truth a wounded military community neglected by the very nation they fight to defend was physically and mentally able to defend this country in my fellow servicemen and i came home to what to be medicated and pushed to the side. that's morally ethically unjust like a monster we're creating when arvada i think bigger has abandoned a lot of not just. the service people but i think the government everybody these are just some of the troubled voices coming from

a growing number of homeless veterans this particular weekend they made their way to stand down an annual nonprofit event that helps thousands of homeless vets get back some dignity many of these vets will get assistance in housing clothing work even a little in their team. and a good meal just a day here at stand down they're going to go through about how tanami just at the all these veterans it's a big deal some of these veterans haven't had a square meal in weeks and unfortunately once they leave here they won't have another one for a very long time it's kind of depressing. a virtual soldier he knows the justice. clifford wakens is a vietnam veteran hoping to get his life back on track for his grandchildren he's a recovering alcoholic. weakens remembers returning from the war and the better

ones administration trying to medicate him and stead of addressing the real problem he suspects their motivation politics politics. this country takes care of everybody else but their own. decision be like that. it's a pattern that has continued for the newer generation of vets i went to the veteran's administration for treatment a year after i was discharged because i was feeling suicidal and i was discharged i was refused treatment actually brian little things history is repeating itself that the u.s. government hasn't learned anything from the vietnam war and that the ongoing conflicts in afghanistan and iraq will only get worse. it's scary i don't want to be around here in ten years this place will be wall to wall no active duty military in general i think. needs to do a better job helping people with transitioning to civilian life dr john nash is in

help start stand down twenty three years ago he's relied on volunteers and donors to pitch in and help where the government has failed not just in things a growing bureaucracy and a lack of coordination are keeping veterans from getting the help they need these weather war heroes have their own take on it. julio with no lyric ok. why should he have to come to you and ask for help you give it to him and more people are going to say you know screw this this is wrong we've got to do something about it instead of committing a crime or rioting or hurting somebody or telling somebody they're going to go walk up to a camera get on the internet you know start an insurgency that needs to be started . in san diego ramon the lindo are. now the for. there is that helping veterans takes

money and according to predictions from the white house the federal budget deficits which had a record one point four trillion dollars last year will exceed that figure this year and again in two thousand and eleven that means the government will be forced to borrow forty one cents of every single dollar that it spends and that means that we can expect cries for cuts to get even louder what will obama and congress be willing to cut where we spend most here to break down the figures for us is our g. correspondent lauren lyster now lauren. i could read it but tell me exactly what that means when we say that the government forty one cents of every dollar that it spends well it means that the government is still spending it's not getting the revenue that we were getting from taxes before this recession the result is obviously this deficit which is reaching a record level we have to borrow in order to pay for it now depending on you talk to on who you talk to show whether this forty one cents on the dollar borrowing is a scary terrible thing or if it's

a necessary thing that the government needs to do because of the economic tough times that this country is in now you know the kind of conventional wisdom that we see in the media is a lot of fear over this deficit a lot of fear over what this means about where america is heading and you know there's kind of a big tied behind cutting deficit spending it's something that obviously was a huge topic of the g. twenty with president obama committed to cutting the deficit along with other world leaders but the economists i've spoken to that are you know very well known and studied this say do not cut deficits in the short term and to misread people's support of deficit cutting it to to mean cut right now that's very misguided because of the situation that this country is in now i mean there's definitely a lot of debate on this issue and you're right you and i have talked about this time and time again not only during the g. twenty but over the past you know year or even more in this country is nobody can agree upon what the right move is countries in

a recession but do we spend our way out of the recession or is spending only going to bring us into this double differently just so i know but realistically if we don't if we have to start cutting some things if we at least want to get the ball rolling you know where they need to be made well one argument that can be made is for defense spending if you really want to see some were they can pack a punch there's not a lot of categories where that can happen except for defense budget defense spending is more than fifty percent of the government's discretionary spending i mean it's a huge chunk. it's fifty percent of the world's spending on defense you know to put it in that context and it's doubled since september eleventh two thousand and one so this is something that many argue has become bloated and is really the only area where you can see these cuts being made that are really going to make a difference to the deficit both short and long term how does it become because believe me i ramble about this all the time the defense spending needs to be cut and that people just turned a blind eye when figures came out the other week that we spent

a trillion dollars on our war on terror since september eleventh and you know that's when politics comes into play because you have a lot of republicans right now that are happy to jump on obama and you know talk about the fact that we need to spend when these deficit figures come out and yet is there the will the political will within you know within washington to actually cut defense there they easily will say let's cut social security but there's who scared to cut defense right will it's something that typically democrats won't touch because they know that it's such an issue of contest with republicans and republicans don't want to cut defense spending because that's what their position is historically behind you know high defense spending so it's a tough situation and people go back and forth but you know really it's interesting because you point out kind of the political aspects of this deficit story and you have republicans coming out saying you know this record deficit is a sign of obama not obama nomics of you know more spending more debt and fewer jobs and that's really you know one side of the puzzle but then you look and there's

these other areas of spending that the government doesn't have the political will to touch and you know to be fair yes this deficit is a record deficit but the school of thought that believes during economic tough times the government has to run a deficit to make up for what is not happening in the private economy that that's what needs to happen the government has to spend more the government has to cut taxes and during good times you're supposed to run a surplus where this kind of got messed up was during the clinton administration they did run a surplus during good times during the bush administration there was a lot of borrowing. there was a lot of spending that's when the deficit started climbing and that was still during good times so then when the deficit got handed over to obama it was nine point two percent of g.d.p. which is the nation's output which is very high now and worse than our interests and now yeah i had a tough position but i think the defense spending is something that is serves a good hard look and no one here in washington is willing to give it that those lauren lyster giving us our economic outlook aren't still ahead tonight's tool time winner just can't keep his mouth shut on

a constant pissing off potential voters we'll tell you what g.o.p. senate candidate ken buck said this time that's left him begging for forgiveness and is affirmative action still needed in this country some say yes some say no and as affirmative action which also now applies to asian and latin americans discriminate against whites on that issue we are coming up.

watching on t.v. seven thirty in the morning here in moscow and these are the headlines a whistleblower leads thousands of military documents to be internet revealing major cover ups over the war in afghanistan is the biggest media u.s. military history which discloses unsupported civilian deaths and the suspicion that pakistan was supporting that's all of the. war veteran groups in the u.s. or up in arms over what they say are broken government promises big. blame the country they served as let them down and left many homeless. a space to call home it's ten years since the international space station first became habitable what a russian module with life support systems docked with the orbiter many space experts worldwide see the project as the pinnacle of international cooperation. back to the old yana show now and the sensitive so.