information released by the justice department leads some to believe that the f.b.i. may have created the entire plot we're going to host a discussion on that case then we'll tell you about a little known f.b.i. program called cointelpro was the counterintelligence program designed to destroy dissidents in the u.s. in the one nine hundred sixty s. but were there ever any representations for the federal agency john hafiz will join us to shed light on this secretive piece of american history then days before california's election there is plenty of fear mongering around prop nineteen and it's coming from the chamber of commerce but with many advocates already proving that legalization is going to stimulate the economy and provide jobs and we can't help but wonder why the chamber is trying to scare californians reason magazines matt welch will join us to talk about that next what happened to obama two years ago the country was swept up with the ideas of hope and change but here we are today and democrats seem disenchanted both by obama and by the rest of the liberals in office so we're going to find out where it all went wrong and google gets

a free pass from the u.s. government after the internet giant revealed it accidentally collected all kinds of personal information wall street mapping well the federal trade commission decided not to fully investigate the company's actions so why isn't the u.s. government worried about it when other countries are going to ask a question of the end of the show but now let's move on to today's top story. yesterday thirty four year old faruq ahmed a naturalized u.s. citizen born in pakistan now a virginia resident was arrested for allegedly plotting attacks on washington d.c. area metro stations now the justice department announced that he's been charged with collecting information things like recording video images of metro stations scouting them and drawing diagrams and that information was allegedly to have been used to assist in planning a terrorist attack he's also being charged with allegedly attempting to provide material support to help carry out multiple bombings only the nine page indictment . leased by the justice department leads to some glaring questions as to whether

the f.b.i. may have cooked up the entire plot the indictment doesn't allege that ahmed had any contact with genuine terrorists and in fact the people that he interacted with whom he believed to be members of al qaeda well they were in fact working for the f.b.i. so that leads us to ask is this the case of entrapment and if so do plots like this really keep america any safer or joining me from our studio in new york to discuss it is independent journalist petra barr to see if it who is finishing her book on terrorism trials in the us titled the best terrorists we could find her thanks so much for joining me now you know as far as as far as i understand all the research that i've done on this this all started because ahmed allegedly told an associate that he wanted to engage in jihad that information then was passed on to our forty's who then started monitoring but i don't see where you make the jump from monitoring someone to then you know i don't know hatching up an entire plan and

leading them to the point where they are arrested. well that's that's correct that's going to be the big mystery in this case is how did we move from a claim of wanting to commit jihad whatever that means to actually surveilling metro stations in northern virginia which the defendant actually did do what he didn't know was that the people whom he was dealing with who he thought were al qaeda were actually f.b.i. agents it appears that he was working with undercover agents throughout the whole brief operation which went from april until his arrest just this week but now so in this entire nine page indictment it doesn't really give you too much details on the f.b.i.'s role we don't know who it was that came up with the plots to monitor the metro stations to plan bombings there in the first place we don't know if ahmed was being paid by the f.b.i. we don't even know how they met so it just seems odd to me because shouldn't things like that belong in legal documents and he does that tell you that there's

something they're trying to hide here. not necessarily an indictment is usually just a bare bones statement of allegations none of this has been proven in court yet this is still the very early phase this is basically the government's accusations against mr ahmed so there's a lot of missing pieces but this pattern is becoming very familiar and there have been numerous cases involving sting operations where the government comes in and looks at somebody they think is suspicious and then they kind of coax them into in a fake bomb plot or something similar and at the end of the day you really have to wonder looking at some of these cases was there the defendants would have really ever engaged in any sort of illegal activity along these lines if left to their own devices so the level to which the government is involved is the big question mark but i think it's the all important question in these types of cases what i mean you could say that you know if somebody was walking down the street and says that i

want to engage jihad which is a first a very vague term i mean that's. matter of your freedom of speech right those are your first amendment rights so how is it that. i was saying that you know when the government then starts interfering and that and we don't know if someone like you said would have ever been driven to the point where they create those you know where they go along with those actions i mean is it legal on the government's point of view it definitely doesn't seem ethical to me. well the courts have said that it is legal that these cases do not cross the line into entrapment there hasn't been a successful defense using entrapment since the nine eleven attacks there was a case that just finished up in. federal court in lower manhattan a trial of four men who were convicted of plotting to plant bombs in a synagogue and community center in. state in the bronx and this was considered a huge test of the entrapment defense and it failed so that the government should follow up on people that they think are suspicious who are maybe saying these

things is entirely reasonable whether they should be manufacturing the crime and providing the weapons and seeing individuals with money especially people who are poor or who are otherwise vulnerable in some way to that kind of persuasion that's a greater question because it goes to the bigger issue of where we're allocating our resources in the war on terrorism now in your opinion do you think that you're right you know there are a lot of examples like this springing up in the days post nine eleven the one you gave was the new birth four but do these operations really make america safer. i don't know that all of these cases of the defendants. really make america safer i don't it's that's a really tough question to answer because you're talking about whether somebody might some day given the right persuasion and conditions commit this crime if the government had not stepped in with informants or agents undercover to create the scenario i think that when you look at cases like the times square bomber where

somebody was actually willing to create a device and planted in times square they have a lot of bigger things to worry about right now than going through every individual who might some day be persuaded to commit a crime i don't think law enforcement has resources that great yet that they could cover all of those bases well definitely still very early on in this case we only have the indictment for now and we're going to follow. from the the words of an attorney involved here who is saying that you know this just proves that the threat of terrorism is still very much alive in northern virginia which sometimes makes you question if it's it's a little bit of fear mongering and exacerbating the issue petra thanks so much for joining us. thank you very much. right now we just brought up questions about the f.b.i. and the government but let's look back to fifty years ago at the height of the cold war the u.s. was engaged in a war abroad as well as one right here on home soil. counterintelligence program

cointelpro went on the attack infiltrate undermine and destroying dissidents in the u.s. victims of this movement decades ago claim that cointelpro is responsible for an apathy toward american movements into the society corresponded to one half is tells us more about this f.b.i. program. buried in the shadows of america's history books an era known to its victims as america's dirty war a war against its own citizens. it's been. fifty four years since the f.b.i. launched a covert war against political dissidents the counterintelligence program more infamously known by its acronym cointelpro i have people know i have freedom i have people that and i have a people die a path that made me have a go the black panther party the american indian movement antiwar organizations even civil rights leaders and hollywood stars the list of targets was endless

fueled by the frenzied paranoia of mccarthyism and the growth of radicalism the objective of cointelpro was simple undermine destroy popular movements by any means infiltration destabilization of bribery we were victims of agent provocateur tourers police infiltration they try to incite our members to go and commit acts of violence as the black nationalist movements gain traction nationwide and also gain the f.b.i.'s attention. we've got hurt the party is probably going to be number one and the promising young leader fred hampton a target when i believe the man with the land where no malcolm i am. over there hampton was shot to death in his apartment he was twenty one years old if you take for help to him it was out now to murder direct murder if they can't misdirect and they just kill him that's the rule less the history of the united states

government american indians are becoming militant commanding the government to take action to help solve their problems you are being discriminated at the site of the eight hundred ninety one dinny massacre the american indian movement held the government gunpoint the f.b.i. moved in immediately dennis banks was an aim leader the suspicion was started to rise after we realize what they were doing to the black panthers and we had a series of meetings. saying look we've got to be aware that this is there's a great possibility that they might be you know targeting. or infiltrations a reign of terror soon gripped the pine ridge reservation in south dakota over sixty a members were murdered others were dragged through the courts. like peltier imprisoned for murdering two f.b.i. agents but some suggests the evidence and witnesses were flawed corrupted today to

many he's america's foremost political prisoner. you know out of this area. who grew up with never going to. before there were the wiki leaks papers or the pentagon papers there were the cointelpro papers in the late one nine hundred seventy s. activists broke into the f.b.i. field office in pennsylvania where they still thousands of documents pertaining to the f.b.i. program almost immediately a scandal exploded a top official from the f.b.i.'s national bureau here in washington d.c. or something to capitol hill for a congressional investigation which exposed the f.b.i.'s covert war against political dissidents in the united states the church committee concluded many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society today even if all targets had been involved in violent activity but cointelpro went far beyond that the bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of

first amendment rights of speech and association or to its prose there are dangers for american society. and for the even for the american judicial system to support that kind of. terrors a culture of surveillance paranoia and suspicion from the past that some argue has left american protester dissidents movements in disarray even today jan hoffa's r t washington d.c. . well john joins me now in the studio with more on this story you know so you covered the hill. that's right the the conclusions that were coming through but what happened after that you know was this a huge scandal was the media all over because i feel like this is a story that the majority of americans probably don't know about actually it was a huge scandal when this broke back in one nine hundred seventy one and of course led to the church committee which we now know investigated watergate the cia's dirty wars and latin america but you know what really came for it was in that era

a lot of people were aware that the f.b.i. was spying on them was actually not protecting the citizens was engaged in this secretive covert war to dampen any kind of political dissent throughout the country i think why we don't hear about it now and why we don't know about political prisoners is because it is a very dark period in american history according to a lot of historians i know and i found out about in history class i was fairly shocked about it even more so when i was on the pine ridge reservation two years ago in two thousand and eight i ran into former members of aim and they said look around you nothing's changed from the cointelpro operations of the one nine hundred seventy s. the mentality of the f.b.i. to either frame people or to go after people for their political views is definitely still in place now if you went over some of the of the more broad elements of the story here and give us some of the more details of exactly what the f.b.i. did how they went after people you know for example the letter that they wrote to dr martin luther king sure well i mean the look fear that was that was put into

people back in the day paralyzed a lot of different movements because of cointelpro so as you mentioned this letter written tomorrow is their king they were actually bugging his room as he was having dates with certain women or what depending on what he was doing in the use that information against him and they wrote this letter that says you have only one last thing to do you have thirty four days to do it and they were referring to suicide they were trying to convince him to commit suicide because he was a fraud he was sleeping around and they were just really pinning this idea that they could get him but he wasn't the only high profile figure jeanne she seeburg who's actually a hollywood actress was a hollywood actor. she was actually giving money to black panther party for their soup kitchens if they had not all these different cities in the country as well as the american indian movement because these weren't radicalized militant groups that were hell bent on destroying the us government in the country they were actually starting organizations trying to help their people and that's how they became radicalized and because of this the f.b.i. disseminated all this false information in the tabloids saying that she was seven

months pregnant with the baby of a black panther member that turned out to be false and create a very bad relationship with her own husband a couple of years later she commits suicide not to mention her child died two days after it was born so they really created this idea that you cannot collaborate with people you could not work with these people and a lot of different groups did not know that the f.b.i. was a behind the law is in for infiltration an agent provocateur is i mean one of the most obvious signs that the f.b.i. had a hand in this was the murder of they actually sent an f.b.i. informant to drug fred hampton before they came in shot up the place as he was killed in x.'s pregnant girlfriend and i was definitely like you said a very dark piece of american history that i think is very important that people remember people don't forget so that we keep questioning our government you know to make sure that they aren't doing these things again to anyone they want tries to practice their freedom of speech john thanks so much. so to come on tonight's show the midterm election is still a few days away but the white house has seen

a mass exodus of top administration employees so what's behind that move artie's lauren lyster reports and we come back and voters next week will decide if pot should be legal in california and now the chamber of commerce is awaiting into the battle of legalizing weed so i'm going to ask why a group that supports business creation job creation is coming out against a measure that stands to create jobs in the state. issues that. there is nothing for me to do the likes of never really. hungry for the truth and dancers is the world facing that. introduced the victims of all these before around. larry summers rahm emanuel david axelrod these are just

a few of the people resigned from the obama administration recently when several key members are jumping ship americans can't help but wonder if there's just too many issues on the president's plate right now so is this a sign of the current administration is dealing with more than it can handle artie's lauren lyster takes a closer look at the white house exodus. ask anyone on the street if a bunch of heavy hitters that were say running a company all started resigning and retiring one after another what would you think was going on i think companies are performing i think probably that is going on there they're not happy with their boss or they're not happy with the working conditions now what if that place of employment was the white house and their boss we will renew old alliances the president of the united states that's a tough question whether people find it more complex or find themselves more politically correct. there's no ignoring that something's up when all the

president's men or at least a lot of them start lining up for the do or going to buy one. at this point before a critical midterm election this is highly unusual to have so many people leaving the white house i've been told what this is emblematic of is a white house in crisis and excuses of exhaustion or jobs at premiere universities don't seem to fully explain recent and imminent departures they read like a laundry list of obama's once nearest and dearest chief of staff even as i leave the white house i will never leave that spirit of service. top political advisor director of the council of economic advisors larry summers is one of the worst buyers he ever made paramount being he was instrumental in the financial meltdown the chairwoman of the council of economic advisors budget director national security director defense secretary gates is like a fossil at this point. i mean i think there was only so long they could hold

somebody over from the bush administration i think and general commanding forces in afghanistan with all of these people jumping ship you have to wonder if it's because the administration is sinking into a sea of the country's bottomless problems poor economic situation the wars in afghanistan which are in iraq are not going well bomb around on a promise of removing the troops from. iraq he hasn't done that the white house doesn't have a magic wand they can't fix the economy no matter who's in office but policies that really are inadequate are unable to really even dent the problem are not going to work and that's what we've had here so where does this leave the once popular president who won over much of the world with his pledge of hope and change. high and dry he was an american idol president and now he's being voted off the island and maybe he even wants to be the word is he's depressed critics say he's

spending more time golfing in campaigning on the stump to escape the promises as president but even the average person could see he would have to desert i think that he came to really really tough time and it's going to take probably more than two years to fix it it took more than two years to kind of they're getting down the drain they're fighting probably and was sworn in afghanistan you know they're looking for supposedly one man for the pass ten years and you know for some reason the whole world can't find them. well the white house in crisis may be the result of a country in crisis remains to be seen what this means for the united states if its leaders can present a united front lauren lyster r.t. washington d.c. . with just days left before election day anti prob nineteen advocates are seriously we're going out to buy that mean by that i mean there's scaremongering

with such intensity that anyone who lives in california really should be trembling with fear of the thought of marijuana becoming legal take a look at this new ad put out by the chamber of commerce. imagine coming out of surgery and the nurse caring for you with or having to work harder on your job to make up for a coworker who shows up high on pot it could happen in california if proposition nineteen passes prop nineteen would do more than simply legalize marijuana prop nineteen is what is so broadly that it would hurt california's economy raise business costs and make it harder to create jobs and. can you imagine getting out of surgery and the nurse caring for you is high you know it probably happens all the time considering how many people are addicted to prescription pills in this country but that's a whole different story that's already legal i think the biggest question we have to ask here is why the chamber of commerce why big business is working so hard to put a stop to prop nineteen especially considering that its passage was is supposed to

create thousands of jobs so is job creation what they're supposed to be doing well joining me to discuss it is matt welch editor in chief of reason magazine thanks so much for being here thanks for me but do it can you imagine if you had a surgery and the nurse caring for you was high only if she had some to share i guess. is the question no it's ridiculous all that space these scaremongering over this stuff is is hilarious and it runs counter to the experience of countries like portugal which has decriminalized legalized a lot of hard drugs and seen drug. go down i don't think drug use would go down in california if it became more widespread and more legal but alcohol is legal to people show up wasted to work no because they would get fired and the same thing is true despite all the scaremongering from the chamber of commerce and everybody else who is against this including all the newspapers in california well that's the thing that's what they keep claiming is that you know this is going to put it tie the hands of any business because now they legally won't be able to stop their

employees from coming to work stoned that's absolutely not true that part is absolutely untrue the one thing that's true that they're hitting on is that it affects drug testing pre employment drug testing i shamefully took one pre-employment drug test in my life to work at the l.a. times but at least they let me write about it's make fun of them and the process but. as it stands now if you have a trace of t.h.c. in your blood maybe happen when you smoke you know one joint thirty days prior to working someplace they can use that as a reason not to hire you now according to the language of proposition it needs to show impairment that the amount that you find that a drug test would lead to the idea that you're paired as part of your job and this is especially true if you're working in construction or something that you're dealing with heavy equipment that would change under this and so the chamber it like you know anyone protecting their own narrow little interests they want to be able to have as many rules as possible to subject their own employees to drug testing it's not about creating jobs outside of the people whose interest they

represent it's about their own businesses who are contributing and they want to be able to drug test their own employees were they explaining that to everybody because you think chamber of commerce right and you think big business and you think of these people are supposed to be about job creation right now and prop nineteen is supposedly supposed to create thousands of jobs all across california i mean it just doesn't it is not if you think it will get very skeptical it does in that every like every lobby like every union like every business lobby there after their own narrow self-interest and their narrow self-interest is to be able to screen. they're potential employees to the maximum amount allowable by law before they're hired they don't give a rat's patootie about the rest of the state large and what you're seeing now and what's interesting about this whole thing there's a story in the huffington post that obtained documents about the chamber of commerce trying to rally support within its own ranks and this is where i take some optimism out of it they're saying we're having a difficult time getting business owners excited by how terrible this is going to

be and that's why and that's because it's not terrible and they know it in their heart of hearts so it's a normal thing for it you know lobbies to work for their own narrow self-interest at the expense of the general well the thing is that you know i mean some people have asked whether this also could be seen as just an act of desperation because this is this is really just fear mongering to the extreme if you ask me but the thing is the polls are shifting the last time you and i spoke about this the poster shifting even now the tide is turning to where the majority of californians are no longer supporting prop nineteen so that even really need to put out these types of ads i think they do because there's a question of whether there's what they're calling the broadus effect named after calvin broadus otherwise known as snoop doggy dog where the polling doesn't show accurate reflection of where people are on this because they don't want to admit to being in favor of what is considered to be illegal or what if you don't want to even admit in a poll that you're in favor of it then you're obviously not going to come out and vote for it in public either not necessarily i mean that's why we have secret

voting in this country people are going to i mean maybe my dad i don't like your neighbors will see you standing in line and i don't think of that secretive you know yeah it's true but there's there's reason to suspect but it's also traditionally ballot initiatives in every state in california included the last days before the actual election day they tend to break negative all the undecideds err on the side of voting no it's going to be a toss up here we don't really know but the fear mongers the people who are addicted to the status quo and the chamber of commerce everywhere in the world loves the status quo because they have power just like newspapers love the status quo because they. power there's a reason why these groups but not the citizens don't want to see a fundamental change of the group now does that put you in any kind of a touchy situation because you reason people are all for your freedoms and all for we need but at the same time you're about business and business allowing hell no allowed to do what they want to do hell no is the answer people commonly make the mistake with libertarianism that it means that you love everything every corporation does it's kind of the opposite actually the less rules there are for

them to gain the more freedom we have we don't necessarily believe that every business wants to expand the net pool of freedom they don't they want to expand their own personal profits and they will gain the existing structure to do that so i have no problem with making the chamber of commerce unhappy as often as possible . or will have to do it again sometime and thanks so much thank you i have still to come tonight are told time award involves obama jon stewart and you i'll explain in just a moment and have democrats lost their way just two years ago they chanted and cheered about hope and change revamping the us government and now the political party well they just look lost so what do they all go wrong when i speak with the nation's ari berman after the break. wealthy british style it's time to. go. to the. markets why not. find out what's really happening to the global

economy comes a report on our. broadcast in live from central moscow this is our team to get our headlights a new wave of demonstrations in france over the raising of the pension age by two years to sixty two as the parliamentary national assembly finally approves a bitterly contested bill however public support for widespread. disruption which has been crippling the country costing hundreds of millions of euro a day appears to be failing. in the e.u. leaders summit has agreed to outline measures for stricter financial discipline and ways of handling financial downturns including the need to change the lisbon treaty to allow for bailouts for budget busting nations there's also over european

commission and european parliament plans to up the use of budget by almost six percent with some nations opposed as they seek to impose harsh spending cuts at home. russian prosecutors have launched their first ever case against a man suspected of being the world's biggest spammer blamed for a fifth of the world's junk mails you go to these on the run is alleged to have made a fortune of over one hundred million dollars by sending out emails advertising virility and anti impotence of drugs now my colleague the incomparable marina joshie will be in in just a bit but right now it's part two of the only on the show next on r.t. . it's time for tonight's two of them do you know if you haven't heard president obama drop by the daily show last night to speak with jon stewart he's in town ahead of this weekend's big rally planned on the national mall now do.