it was way. beyond the time of the vicinity to ask russia spy scandal on a choppin is exposed again this time in a sexy photo shoot for glossy magazine but the public face now seeing trump and the breach occurred on the president also wanted the pictures on the web. i discriminate on the basis of the cost of the legal arena to have but in also the country remains the main sponsor went to missing a long pole in the basic growing number of couples in the country are facing rejection by families and communities that would turn back the. next on all see this time i'm going to take some bacon to the case so we are going presidential aide being investigated for corruption who turns out to be a cia agent. well can be alone a show where you get the real headlines with none of the mersey are coming live out

of washington d.c. and today looks like the neo cons have returned gen david petraeus just hired frederick kagan to fight corruption in karzai government but is this scary revelation proof that obama's administration really does mimic president bush's we'll speak with radio host tom hartman next we'll ask if the criminal justice system really works in this country a new report shows that our north carolina crime lab has withheld or given faulty forensic evidence and over two hundred and thirty cases and this unfortunately is not an isolated incident so what does that say about our system we'll speak with the reason magazines radley balko then seventeen attorney general attorneys general are teaming up to get craigslist to drop its adult section after years of uncertainty surrounding the page many states want to drop a section altogether to avoid any chance of prostitution but is removing something on craigslist really going to fix the problem orders sex trafficking and much more

complicated issue that needs attention in this country will speak with c.n.n. baskin from the sex workers project and also we'll continue our series on obesity in america yesterday we mentioned how genetically modified foods can have a direct effect on your waistline so today we'll have a debate about whether or not g.m.o. is are going to help people or hurt the globe population in the long run and manhattan residents are asking what recession all the rest of the u.s. is suffering it seems that some things in manhattan are unaffected and in fact better than they were before i'm talking about housing sales so we'll figure out why that is at the end of today's show but now let's move on to our top story. you may have thought that the obama administration would bring not only a new face but a new ideology geology to washington a democratic more liberal more progressive one you may have also thought the neo

cons have been pushed out along with the bush administration and their aggressive war record but unfortunately that's far from the truth we first saw it with obama's escalation of the war in afghanistan with the rise of the shadow wars the us is fighting around the world and now the return of one man has for many cemented neo-cons return a man named frederick kagan who many call the architect of the iraq surge and who general david petraeus has just hired to help fight corruption and homemade car sized government so will this be a pivotal moment of the neo cons always been in charge behind the scenes we're here to discuss it with me is radio host tom hartman tom thanks so much for joining me now first things first i want to know everything that you can tell me about this mr frederick kagan. well frederick kagan is the author of a pretty pivotal piece of good titled the united states now afghanistan is not

russia or words to that effect and trying to point out the differences frankly i don't think you made a strong case in that in that he's part of that general circle of neo cons that have been around you know d.c. for a long time goes back quite a ways i'm sorry i don't have his bio right in front of me but the the the neo conservatives in general. basically see the world in black and white terms they are not happy with diplomacy that much rather have violence than llamas see their gung ho for military force and the main strategy that they use now kagan has used in the past is to make war seem inevitable and to absolutely demonize the note or to bring it about i think it really comes out of a fundamental real world view that they have. this is a binary world now why would i want to know is you know are you shocked at all that david petraeus has now hired him back onto this team to look at afghanistan and you know dealing with corruption in the karzai government there i mean it seems like

a bench really where he's going to have all the same bush people you know back right at the top with the obama administration. well i doubt that frankly bush had eight major neo cons at the top of his administration as he went into iraq or in the years following that it was the neo cons who really gend up frankford both wars and they did the traditional neo con strategy of saying you know this is inevitable we have to do this years and you know and and following leo strauss has to choose the father of the neo conservative movement professor university of illinois who taught his neoconservative students like paul wolfowitz that there are two stories that need to be told there's the public story for the average person's public consumption and then there's the secret story that only we know cons know among us there's a whole ends justify the means thing there i think that the influence of these folks the obama administration the evidence that the influence of these folks including case in the obama administration is dramatic radically diminished is that

the obama administration has not been pushing hard for bombing iran for example although there was an increase in troops in afghanistan president obama still talking about there being a firm date next year for withdrawing he's he is arguably not but at least making the gestures of pulling out of iraq so i do i don't think this is as bad as it could be and also the trias has given kagan a very limited role which is dealing with corruption karzai and frankly the karzai government is a mess it's probably one of the most corrupt governments on earth and. you know that doesn't justify putting putting a crazy guy in charge of it you know it's it's not like he's been given the keys to the to the you know to the to the nukes to point out iran's for example but i think i just wanted to let you know the thing that a lot of people wonder tom is he said that perhaps that you know i mean are they only are they only gestures here you know perhaps are the neo-cons really more powerful more influential than we think i mean you would have thought that really

a lot of these guys could have gone after the bush administration left but you know there is the funding never and the instant. never and the publication of this train of thought you know this ideology and the and the piece is that these people right now iran the idea of bombing iran we just spoke about this the other day it is very much back in the mainstream and even the obama administration said you know perhaps they're just trying to cater to someone that all options are on the table so you know i don't know can obama even fight against these people if you try. well i'm not sure that ease i think i'm not sure this fight is the right word try to try to thread the needle or avoid them at work around them you're absolutely right that the neoconservative institutions are very powerful of the i believe it's of all sore hundred billionaires in the united states probably half of them are neo conservatives or highly supportive of new concert institutions there is a neo con infrastructure that worldview that leo strauss you know brought to the

sore that we see from the whole spectrum from from the wolfowitz generation of the kagan generation is is very much there you know with kristol and kind of the middle but whether they're going to be able to drive foreign policy as opposed to tinker around the edges within the administration i think it's very much an open question the larger concern that i have frankly is their ability to drive foreign policy outside the administration by driving the media and that's something that they've done very effectively in the past in the they definitely now how to work their way around the media now finally tom i just want to ask do you think that frederick kagan will have a direct effect on this war in afghanistan on the strategy that we use there you know will it be another service that he wants to advocate for. i don't think he's what i understand of his position is he did he would not have the power to do.

frankly the triax i think is as much i'm not sure i'd call petraeus and you know what he's you know he's the guy who's starting around saying you know the surge worked in iraq i don't think the surge worked in iraq what happened in iraq but there it was coincidental with the search was the end bar awakening which is where we went to the sunni leaders and so we'll give you money if you start shooting at us frankly i think that that's how we're going to resolve the afghanistan war as well grounded going to train people off to claim victory and leaving. well i don't i don't see the neo-cons driving that process i see them frankly very resistant to them so i feel i want to thank you very much for joining us. and you know the one place right on everything is i just don't think it's going to be that easy where iraq is going to be cleared over and we leave you know fifty thousand people are i thought going to be there and it's going to continue on for a while thanks so much i agree with you thanks. our we're taking a break but still to come on tonight's show reports tonight that the cia is paying an afghan presidential aide who is under investigation for corruption have come out

so i'll dive into that story in just a moment and we'll continue our look at the justice just justice system here in the u.s. a new report says that a crime lab in north carolina hid or destroyed evidence in hundreds of cases over a sixteen year time period so i'll speak with reasons radley balko in just a few. every month we give you the future we'll do you understand how we'll get there and what tomorrow brings the best in science and technology from across russia and around the world. join our technology update on our g. hungry for the full story we've got. the biggest issues get a human voice seems to face with the news makers. it turns out that an afghan presidential aide who is under investigation for

corruption is also on the payroll of the cia that's i'm not so shocking news that came from the new york times today the report says the afghan national security council official mohamed the s.l.a. he appears to have been receiving cia money for many years what's not clear is whether so leahy is being paid for information or for trying to advance u.s. views inside of afghan president hamid karzai administration so the salafis ties to the cia reflect these contradictions in u.s. policy in afghanistan as we all know washington is demanding the cars i root out corruption in his government a british and american backed anti-corruption task force arrested so leahy last month they said that a wiretap caught him soliciting a bribe in exchange for impeding a u.s. investigation of a company suspected of moving money for afghan leaders drug traffickers and insurgents but cars i intervened in the case securing sadly he's released after

seven hours prison so basically the obama administration is now faced with the dilemma of making anti-corruption efforts a centerpiece of their strategy in the war or overlooking it so as not to destabilize the karzai government neither option the winning one and that's just another reason why we're still stuck in a war that's nearly nine years old and doesn't appear to be ending anytime soon. yesterday we covered the case of troy anthony davis a man on death row for the murder of an off duty police officer despite the fact that he was convicted with no physical evidence and despite the fact that seven of nine witnesses recanted their statements now that case has become notorious internationally for that case is unfortunately not alone and now a new report has come out that paints an even bleaker picture for the criminal justice system in this country a state report has found that one crime lab in north carolina withheld exculpatory

evidence or distorted evidence in more than two hundred thirty cases over sixteen year period and three of those cases resulted in execution you know lying corruption and pressure from prosecutors also overall rampant so joining me to discuss it from nashville is radley balko senior editor at reason magazine bradley thanks so much for joining me looking at this report it's really really disturbing the fact that three people were executed you know on this lab's evidence so can you give us more detail as to you know why this happened perhaps what motivation the people that worked in these labs had to tamper with the evidence. well i think it's more kind of systematic problem with the way crime labs particular state crime labs work in this country and in a lot of states that stay quiet when it actually reports to prosecutors or to the state attorney general so there's always going to be a lot of pressure on these crime lab analysts and technicians even not even the

honest good ones which most of them are but there's always going to be the sort of incentive to please the people that they're reporting to which you know in too many cases it's the or the our prosecutors and there are there are all just sorts of bad incentives i think built into the way we deal with forensic evidence in this country. even beyond that i think there's just generally a lot of pressure to. to to find evidence that will help when convictions and there's just not enough actual science in forensic science there's very little in the way of peer review there's very little in terms of blind testing and it too often i think what happens is the authority is for set their sight so that their sights on the person that committed the crime and then the they go out and seek the brands of evidence to sort of support that theory and should really be around now i'm happy you brought up all those issues because i want to discuss them all you know first of all you're right you said the crime labs they fall under the auspices

of law enforcement they usually report to the attorney general so. you know that just feels like inevitably that and their job is going to be politicized so what would another option be you know who else could they were port to make it more fair as well i mean one thing you could you're going to have them report to a different government agency that isn't law enforcement but i but there are there are other reforms i think that would really make more sense one one reform for example would be to have states hire what you call an evidence camera person sort of. isn't affiliated with any dozen reports any law enforcement agency but whose job it is to sort of shuttle the evidence between the crime lab the crime scene and the courtroom to the prosecutor's office. to that and stop was the one thing that that person would do is that every third or fourth or fifth case they would actually send some of the evidence to an independent crime lab for verification of what the state crime lab was found in a state crime lab you know which cases they were being double checked on so now

what you've done you've basically switched the incentives now the incentive is no not no longer to please prosecutors but to follow the science and to get the science right every time because if you don't you know sooner or later you're going to be found out and then the incentive for the private lab obviously is to actually find evidence of that that that the state crime lab has made mistakes so that they're withholding it's go back to the evidence so that they're you know their science is that this would be one way to shift the incentives that all the incentives point toward good science toward finding you know the right people who actually committed the crime. the reason foundation which magazine our report actually published report a couple years ago laying out a lot of these sorts of reforms but it couple other examples as you know defense attorneys i think defendants should have or should be dollar for dollar when it comes to forensic spending and the prosecution calls ten experts the defense should should have called and of their own experts to counter those state experts now radley everything you're saying just seems way too logical for me. i mean he would

you would think about the way of this country already where it's you know but where did i change i mean i thought that one of the fundamentals here was that you are innocent in america until you're proven guilty and that's one of the things that makes this country great and yet it seems like everything works in exactly the opposite manner so you know how did that happen. well i mean. i think there is a tendency i think we do always have to be careful not to over say the problem in the net think that camilla just is still does get it right the majority vast majority of the time but you know if the question is what percentage of cases where it doesn't get a writer we comfortable with and i think that that number is way too high. but you know i just i think we've had basically a generation or two now kind of law and order attitude that. you know. criminals have too many rights or the people accused of crimes have too many rights and i think the all the public policy has been moving in the direction of less

protections for people accused of crimes more our police powers for prosecutors and law enforcement and i really think that we're seeing particularly d.n.a. testing which is basically you know foolproof unless somebody swaps the samples what we're seeing is a lot of things that we've thought about the commo just system were in error a lot of the assumptions that we had about the certainty of certain kinds of evidence were actually pretty far off and you know what. that in itself i think isn't a problem at all i mean it is a problem but that isn't what really disturbs me it would just serve new york places in the country where they have discovered these problems and have still decided not to do anything about it and i think that's really where you have a more now very quickly my last question to so now they found out this evidence us specifically with this crime lab in north carolina three people were executed because of tampered evidence so are there any representations for the people who worked in those labs or the politicians that put pressure on them or prosecutors. i

mean in most of these cases there are there are there isn't. the there is a supreme court case a couple of years ago looking at prosecutorial misconduct and if you look at the breeze filed by groups like the innocence project new c o u the cato institute basically they have looked at all these cases where an innocent person was convicted and later exonerated by d.n.a. testing and a pretty high percentage of those cases i think it's about forty percent prosecutorial misconduct contributed to the wrongful conviction none of the prosecutors in those cases faced any sort of discipline or reprimand or lost their jobs and in fact a good percentage of them went on to higher office so we're reluctant. you know now this case in north carolina has been pretty high profile from what i understand it's been all over the news down there for the last couple weeks actually so there may be some repercussions in this case but you know as i pointed out of the piece there were a reason on this you know the attorney general still doesn't get it there i mean even after all of this you know he's still saying that the the crime lab is going to be is going to report the attorney general is still going to report to law

enforcement officials now that there's something that made them they have personally you know sick about this the fact that still nothing changes even when this comes out radley thanks so much for joining us at thanks for having me on again. all right coming up kids aren't the only ones who dread class military officers do too well tell you why so many people in the military hate their daily briefings and seventeen so they're going off to the web site craigslist for their adult services section and i'll ask the question would legalize in prostitution help curb sex trafficking here in the u.s. we're back in a moment. more news today ball games lead up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. showing operations around the day.

an old approach for the war in afghanistan might be getting a facelift for years colonels and commanders have been holding meetings on a daily basis to discuss their strategy in afghanistan but there isn't one army reserve colonel that's angry about how those meetings are conduct that according to colonel lawrence sellon these strategy meetings are just filled with over the top never ending pointless powerpoint presentations and this is what i mean when i say over the top believe it or not this mess of a diagram all of this right here is supposed to convey the complexity of america's strategy in that war torn country well i think that they've succeeded here in fact

retired general stanley mcchrystal once made a very snarky comment saying that when we understand this slide we'll have won the war but colonel sellon wrote in at the ground on these diagrams explaining how absolutely pointless these presentations really are when it comes to military success he claims of the daily meetings are just a way to spoon feed generals with information and any mistake in a slide could even leave a top official very confused selling goes on to say that these daily conferences even consist of a roll call for the failings of officers to make sure that they're actually attending every time even claims of the briefings are carried out by a briefer and a very monotonous tone bueller. beeler are what are we in school now this isn't safe the reason that these military officers are graduated and gotten this far in their careers is because they're supposed to be able to think on their feet especially in tough situations but these high school style setting seems

like anything but free thinking to me now selling says the team in charge now afghanistan plans to adjust their organizational structure in the next few months so let's just hope for the team actually takes us fans advice and drops these rinky dink daily lessons well together. attorneys general in seventeen different states across america have banded together to call on craigslist to discontinue their adult services section two years ago the advertising site had to change the name from exotic to adult services and start charging a ten dollars fee per post but the central critique remains the same that ads for prostitution including the trafficking of children are rampant on the site and one organization is even called craigslist the wal-mart of sex trafficking but is craigslist really the problem well taking away the adult services section make life safer for women that are forced into prostitution or is this just a distraction

a way to make a scapegoat out of a company but not change and the government policies we're here to discuss it with me from our studio in new york is attorney sienna baskin the co-director for the sex workers project c.n.n. thanks so much for being with us. first starters i want to ask do you personally think that the adult services section has got to go on craigslist. i think it's a real mystery action of energy if the goal is to end sex trafficking the sex industry and trafficking existed before craigslist and if you eliminated craigslist it would still exist i think there are a lot better places to put our energy if that's our goal but you know at the end of the day has craigslist made this problem worse has it made it more easily accessible for people because of the internet. well i think that you have to understand that the adult services industry is a very diverse industry and there are legal adult services and there are illegal

adult services there are people who do sex work because they enjoy it or they find it interesting and there are people who do it because they have no other options and there are people who are forced or coerced into the sex industry and looking at it all as one. saying i think it's a really not not a complicated or complex way enough of really addressing the problem so then how in perspective ok so how come you know if this is clearly a complex problem but then you have the attorneys general in seventeen different states that essentially are just blaming crags us i mean do you think that they're trying to make a scapegoat out of this company here or to you know to ignore the larger issue at hand. i think they are and i think that the real solutions to trafficking in the real ways that we can help trafficking victims which is what i do at my job every day are much harder and more complicated than just splashy

headline about craigslist i mean we need to look at our immigration system which we have so few options for people to migrate that they end up in really risky situations and are vulnerable to trafficking we need to look at poverty we need to look at the circumstances in which young people flee their homes and become homeless and all of the things that make people vulnerable to trafficking and just eliminating craigslist isn't going to get at those problems now do you think that legalizing prostitution is you know a legitimate alternative here that this would perhaps reduce the amount of sex trafficking in the country. well i think that's a really interesting question because i think what a lot of people don't understand is that criminalizing prostitution is in some ways harmful and it affects sex workers but it also affects survivors of trafficking i have clients that were trafficked were forced into doing sex work and were arrested during that time and convicted in criminal court and then just released right back

to their traffickers and no one noticed that they were being forced and now they have criminal records and it makes it harder for them to get housing for them to get immigration status for them to get jobs in the mainstream sector so criminalization does harm both sex workers and survivors of trafficking and i think it's a. important question to ask of of how to really address that problem so do you know i think. i think legalization by itself isn't really the only solution either for one thing legalisation usually implies some form of regulation and so we really have to look at what those regulations would be and find out who would they benefit and who would be a burden or leave out in a lot of countries and states where prostitution is legal ised those regulations don't include say immigrant sex workers or sex workers who work on the street they're not protected by those laws and those are some of the sex workers who are the most vulnerable to trafficking or violence or police brutality so when we start

to think about a regulatory system we really need to include the voices of sex workers and figure out a system that would actually benefit everyone and so you know what do you think that system would be then i mean how do you actually go after the bad guys and not instead get you know the people that essentially get wrapped up in and are victims of sex trafficking prostitution. well i think that we can start with some really easy policy changes that will benefit a lot of people we recently passed a law in new york that would allow people who have been trafficked into the sex industry to go back and clear their criminal records which will give them a lot more opportunities going forward in their lives and that's something that you think will already would have been happening but it was a real barrier for survivors of sex trafficking so there i think there are measures we can do without making even really broad sweeping changes to the law to reduce the harms of criminalization and reduce those barriers that people have to either

getting out of the sex industry or just you know growing and moving on with their lives. stephanie might be one little part of the problem but it is not the bigger problem in this country thanks so much for joining us and. thanks for having me. all right still to come on tonight's show our tool time winner involves driving in traffic and a sex toy and port three you have to stick around to find out more and we'll continue our look at the food that americans eat are genetically modified foods good or bad for your health well debate the issue next. the top stories from all sea west nile virus hit southern russia at least six people have died with nearly two hundred affected the tropical viruses spread by the skeeters his population increase the wrath of me in this set was heat wave.