welcome to the eleven a show where you look at the real headlines with none of the mercy or you live in washington d.c. now a sex scandal hits the international monetary fund while the world clamors for the details on dominic strauss kahn we'll take a closer look at the i.m.f. itself the way that it's wreaks havoc on much of the developing world and we'll determine why the real scandals of the i.m.f. the ones that make the news then it's an army made up of eight hundred mercenaries and also contentious founder of blackwater is in the middle of it all will bring

you details on this business dealing cluing what these mercenaries are going to do and we'll ask the bigger question here is forming an army like this legal then the war on leakers expanse this time will tell you about how the government is taking n.s.a. employee thomas drake to court but we want to know if drake is indeed convicted the president will this set and we all know that personal debt is a serious problem for many americans but could a lot of that stress and anxiety that comes with that be from those nagging and many times of the use of debt collectors so they will take a closer look at how close collectors operate and will challenge the legality of their methods are going to cover all of that and save room for happy hour in tonight's show but first we have our top story. now if the name dominique strauss kahn didn't ring any bells for americans before it certainly does now that i am of managing director is currently embroiled in a sex scandal on allegations that he sexually assaulted a maid and the new york so if you tell hotel and the media is going crazy over the

details former accusations and other famous clients of his current defense attorney . for you now the head of the international monetary fund just arriving to new york courtroom he said to be arraigned on sexual assault charges in new york city. of course the latest developments on the arrest of the head of. charges of rape head of the international monetary fund i will be arraigned inside this manhattan courthouse shortly that is going to happen a hotel housekeeper accuses dominic strauss kahn of attempted rape. now can we pause for just a moment here i know the media cannot resist a good sex scandal but how about talking about what the i.m.f. really does the greek bailout portugal's debt crisis the anger of breaks and other developing nations at the i.m.f. imbalanced power structure if you think of the financial havoc of the world's largest lender has brought the developing and undeveloped countries and their

populations i think that's where the bigger scandal may lie joining me from our studio in los angeles to discuss that is nomi prins senior fellow at demos and author of it takes a pillage behind the bonuses bailouts and that room deals from washington to wall street now he thanks so much for joining us tonight now tell me if you think i'm right here right the second that a sex scandal explodes on the media scene everybody immediately starts to recognize that name. or do you think that most americans know who it is or even really what the i.m.f. does in this world. you know i would doubt it i mean you know the sex scandal as the sort of reality t.v.'s about it and he's become the center of attention for that reason but the i.m.f. itself of course you know as you mentioned in the lead up is and has been responsible for a lot of what has been going on with the european bailouts with so strace we've seen across your where people aren't quite happy regular people with the ways that

the i.m.f. are extracting. austerity measures from them in return for bailouts or bailing out of their financial systems their banks just very much like we had here and i think a lot of americans don't see that the same thing that has happened here treasury department the federal reserve which a lot may also not be paying attention to but if they were the i.m.f. is sort of central to what's been going on similarly throughout europe now also one of the largest complaints when it comes to the i.m.f. is the fact that this organization has been run by europeans and americans always in the second spot for decades and that's something that you know the greek nations a lot of other developing countries have complained about some are even speculating that maybe just maybe if dominique strauss kahn does have to leave his spot now that that my open the door for a different kind of leadership or do you think it's still going to be someone from the e.u. . i think right now given the strong hold that the e.u.

has had i mean through him but in general given the turmoil that's happening in europe that. has been sort of the backbone of what the european central bank the has been doing to preserve the euro to basically contain europe as it is with the dominant countries being germany and france and so forth and i don't i don't really see a succession to him changing that policy too much right now i think there's too much and royal mint in the bailouts in what's happening in the policies of the i.m.f. has been affecting on the more peripheral nations the ones that are struggling by more than the central european nations and i think that therefore it's not likely are going to see someone pop in from outside of that general philosophy we haven't seen anyone and i don't think though this would be a good time it's always been a good time that that's going to happen right now and i know the i.m.f. has also been criticized often for having a double standard when it comes to other nations let's say south american and

american countries that's when they really enact the strict austerity measures and any kind of you know lending that they might do comes with a lot of strings attached but they don't necessarily have the same type of strict measures if it's a european country that gets into this kind of trouble but greeks debt crisis for example right now is turning out to be much worse than many people would expand expected so do you think that now we're going to see a bit of that same medicine inflicted upon european countries or is going to get off pretty easily here. well i think compared to latin american country a south american country of a more developing country it might look like greece is getting off easy or portugal or so forth but but the extractions that some of the the bailout money have been asking for are are pretty intense some in portugal for example the seventy eight billion dollars package that's being discussed right now contains two thirds of it

would be offset by austerity measures by cuts effectively to public types of services and and so forth so i think that that's going to continue that's what's happened in greece there was one hundred forty one billion dollar bailout package between the i.m.f. and the e.u. last year that hasn't worked out because it was extracting austerity from the public while it was trying to subsidize the financial system that had failed in greece similarly to how it had failed in the united states and the other countries so i think what the i love has done is divide out. into these peripheral and sort of core countries and extract these are the measures in return for bailout money but it should be noted that bailout money is being used and has been used because the financial systems throughout europe throughout the globe throughout those periphery countries have been so so very very screwed up. you know spain for example right now is on the docket for potentially getting available the reality is

they are there one hundred thirteen billion dollars worth of bad debt bad loans sitting in their banking system the just popping up now and what the i.m.f. has continually done is ignore the problems the bigger problems of the dead of the banks of the financial system being decayed and concentrated through these these bailout measures of giving money to the banking system and extracting from the citizens of those countries is very much what it has done in other countries throughout the globe but in this particular case it's very clear that it's the banking systems that have screwed up these countries it's the banking systems that are getting a lot of float and it's the public similar to what. being discussed here in the united states that's being asked to pay that price and you know a lot of people definitely criticize the i.m.f. for ignoring the larger issues at hand especially when it came to the financial crisis that we all experienced but do you think also you know the funny thing here is that i am actually wants to play a larger role right after the financial crisis hit we decided to fund more money to the i.m.f. now the i.m.f. wants to make s.d.

ours the reserve currency in the world that could possibly replace the dollar do you think about a good idea. i think the discussion about what will replace the dollar right now is it would be a good idea to have a global currency that they can be used that doesn't have the control the dollar has over over the globe but at the same time. i think the reality of changing away from a dollar is i think still very far away you have these countries holding dollars you have a situation where the federal reserve has devalued our dollar and same time there's a flood of dollars throughout the world and so using something else in exchange requires extracting back those dollars which requires devaluing a more which is painful in the process so it is a longer term process than just a conversation and i think right now the fact that. states among others has basically been funding the i.m.f. to exact some of these are scary measures and to to bail out the financial system is in a way also kind of bailing out the problems in our own financial system and in how

the global markets actually operate so it's a kind of backhand help to all of all of the banks is the ones that may have problems here and the ones that operate globally in the ones that have. been very painful to her for countries and also core countries and in europe you know definitely has a large and. in the global economy here and something that i think not enough people really know about or understand especially here in america despite the fact that is based here in d.c. but now the dominic strauss kahn is on the record for a very public sex scandal we'll see if any of that changes now we want to thank you so much for joining us tonight thank you. now still to come tonight building a private army it's a former owner of blackwater erik prince is now reportedly building an army of mercenaries for the u.a.e. so we'll speak with christopher swift about his latest venture that's raising a few eyebrows and then the war on whistleblowers by the obama administration next

not a former n.s.a. member goes on trial for retaining that i survived information it was the n.s.a. member just trying to raise awareness about government waste and abuse the types of leaks that obama claims to support have won not just in the facts. but we in the persian rug. we haven't got the. schaefer get ready because the freedom.

hey guys welcome michel ancel on the ellen show part of our guests have to say on the topic now i want to hear audio just go on to you tube to video response or to twitter first part of the question the police host on you tube every monday and on thursday the show long response is a local. for. instance. funny.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for like sleep you think you understand it and then he limps something else you hear sees some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know much on her blog or the big picture. money can buy you everything these days and according to the new york times the u.a.e. is just purchased an army of up to eight hundred strong army of mercenaries made up of colombian south africans and trained by retired american soldiers as well as british german and french veterans and guess who's in the middle of it all erik prince the founder and former owner of blackwater according to the contract was released to the times the crown prince of doggie is made a deal for five hundred twenty nine million dollars and promises billions more if

the venture proved successful and the force is reportedly intended to conduct special operations missions inside and outside the country depend on oil pipelines and skyscrapers from terrorist attacks and put down internal revolts making the possible effects all that more palpable considering the arab spring the take in the middle east and northern africa by storm this year apparently prince has one rule car no muslims as they can't be counted on to kill their fellow muslims so is this starting a new era of hired guns and mercenary armies and is it completely legal here discuss this with me is christopher swift a fellow at the university of virginia law school's center for national security law christopher thank you so much for being here tonight great to be back this is this is quite a sign of the times i guess you can say when you literally can't buy anything including an army but i think that this could have a number of our percussion so let's just start talking through some of them were started as the u.s. government we don't know according this report there is no official backing of this

project if you sources within the ministration say that maybe there's a little bit of quiet support but at the end of the day do you think it matters if one of the things that these mercenaries are supposed to do is put down a revolt and they know that there are merican trainers they know that some of these american trainers are going to be going out and fighting putting down with them is that undoubtedly going to look bad for us you can't do this under u.s. law without a license from the state department and that whole question of how would americans and others being involved in training a force out. that force be used how would that force interface with indigenous forces and more importantly with the indigenous political leadership all of those questions would be considered during the process of applying for that license now it's best we've seen so far there is no license so if there isn't a license you have a us person involved in these sort of activities you have a legal problem but getting away from the legal question the policy problem is bigger there are two contradictory objectives in the region right now the first is

securing the gulf in the face of a potential you know potential difficulty from iran given the bizarre behavior we've seen from iran the last couple of weeks that's an understandable call but to the extent so to the extent to which at least thought these forces would be used to augment the capabilities that indigenous forces have i think there's a good policy argument for them to the extent that they're being used for the purpose of internal control to the extent that they sort of supersede the relationship between the people who run the society and the people who live in the society that's highly problematic and definitely something that would give most us officials and indeed most journalists and most of the sims pause for consideration but at the same time we haven't heard our government saying anything about it the state department supposedly is investigating looking into this i've said it's a pretty big problem now if you have you know former american veterans that are now training these armies of mercenaries that maybe putting down revolts i mean if we look at the example right of libya gadhafi so far has been the only one to really

employ these techniques where he did hire mercenaries coming from africa and so then the u.s. government the u.n. we decided it was time to intervene to help these health a civilian there but what happens if those mercenaries are going to be american we're going to intervene and start bombing our own people as well when i was at the treasury department i went to the world so i had there was to investigate people who were violating u.s. sanctions policy so people would send something to iran or sudan or any number of other countries that they shouldn't say we would track that down just because someone's done it doesn't mean it. the u.s. government knows about it and so i know what we don't know what the u.s. government does or doesn't know i would imagine that the state department based on my experience in government or experience in government is in a similar situation and reacting to the news looking at the bigger broader policy question you know the kinds of states that use. mercenaries are different from the kinds of streets that use private contractors power contractors provide logistics they provide support they provide information and basically use to augment

a military force be a mercenary force is designed to be accountable only to the people who hire it right and not to the population where that force may or may not be operating and if you are the kinds of states that are involved in hiring those sort of those sort of forces they tend to be folks that arose regimes that are run by small groups usually families they tend to be economically wealthy and politically poor in terms of their institution up to about what might be a case in point but if they happen to be one of our allies then maybe it's ok i know everybody is concerned if you don't make problematic look part if you look at if you look at his original documents start if you look at one of the major complaints they had against the united states and everything that was going wrong the muslim world was non muslim soldiers being in the arabian peninsula working for what they called a prostate regimes to the extent that this news is playing out there scenario it's only verifying that rhetoric and feeding back into that same source of aggravation

resentment that causes the militancy we've seen it also runs directly counter to the more optimistic pluralistic and hopefully peaceful changes we've been seeing in the arab spring well definitely see how this turns out if it is successful the crown prince of abu dhabi has already said that there are billions of our dollars to be made here that he wants a larger force whereas right now may only be eight hundred and he wants thousands and erik prince himself is already considering of opening up a large compound where he can train forces from all over the world so it really. raises so many questions as to what it whether this is going to be the new face of learning but i would say i don't know if it's going to be the new face of warfare in terms of how states interact with one another but the rise in private security firms is something that's happened with the advent of the multinational corporation and some of these firms do legitimate and important work in important places i remember when i was in afghanistan some of these chaps were the hard working legitimate chaps that was trying to put his wife to nursing school so it's not all bad the question is i know

a few i said oh yes we interviewed them here yeah i think that undoubtedly though when you see a certain state and there are a lot of questions that arise there will be internal could be internal dissent christiane thank you very much for joining us thanks so much. and now the obama administration which promised to be the most open and transparent isn't living up to its record high the opposite they've waged a war against whistleblowers with you expounder julian assange p.f.c. bradley manning being the most high profile cases but in full this is ministration is using the as you know jack to press criminal charges in five different cases of alleged national security leaks and more prosecutions that all other administrations combined and on june thirteenth of this year the case against thomas age rate is scheduled to begin now we've mentioned before on this program is a former senior executive at the n.s.a. who's accused of retaining classified documents as well as obstructing justice lying to federal law enforcement agencies and if convicted on all those counts he

could go to jail for thirty five years but if you look at the details which are excellent reported today by jane mayer of the new yorker and of peace this wasn't a case of national security being put to risk it was a case of a whistleblower trying to ring the alarm on government waste and abuse of power in the post nine eleven surveillance era so if he is convicted what kind of precedent is that going to set you and me to discuss this is just an unrated homeland security and human rights director for the government accountability project which is the nation's leading was a lower advocacy organization thank you so much for joining us. and i think there has been now if you can go a little bit further into detail in terms of thomas drake specifically what type of documents he was retaining what kind of information he gave over to the baltimore sun you know when he was in contact with them well he documents use charged with retaining amount to fairly and knock you with pieces of information three of them are documents or graphs of documents of things that he turned over to

the department of defense inspector general as a whistle blower and two of them were turned over to the sean gorman of the ball it's more fun and unclassified that those are the documents we're talking about very innocuous and yet that might have put away for thirty five years here but these documents i mean often i think that the argument that we hear from the government is that it puts our national security at risk especially it puts the troops on the ground it puts their lives in danger when we're just talking about perhaps a lot of money that's being wasted at the n.s.a. can you really make an argument that it's putting lives in danger well the prosecution has certainly made that are that argument though they have alleged no harm that's actually been done and in fact if anything mr kerry was trying to help his agency and improve the country and it wanted to blow the whistle and did blow the whistle on illegal secret didn't mess dick surveillance which.

pulled surprise the new york times and a lot of accolades and helped get president obama elected so it's very perplexing to the whistleblower community and the first amendment community the vigor with which the administration and the whole department has been going after whistleblowers and particularly under the espionage act which is meant to go after spies. whistleblower's oh and that's odd too because the obama administration not only did obama promise to have the most open and most transparent administration he in fact said that he you know he thinks that some of the best information comes from whistleblowers when it comes to waste fraud and abuse within our government so would think that is what happened to him you know thomas drake himself said that perhaps obama was co-opted by all of these by the security community by the security experts because he himself didn't have all that much experience with them

so he just accepted that the fear now that's put out there do you think that that's true you know i think there are a number of different factors that play it's no secret that obama has a particular distain for leaking and that was seen when when mcchrystal was dismissed for stuff that he said even though later the pentagon cleared him but in addition to obama's personal distaste for leaking i do think he's trying to curry favor with national security and intelligence apparatus because he was seen as weak in there's area. and perhaps tossing them up boon for releasing torture information early on so interestingly when asked about this president obama said you know we leaks like watergate were ok you know leaks about contractor fraud are ok weeks like weeks or anything about it you know

indeed during troop movements or telling nuclear secrets that kind of thing is not ok yet drake is precisely the kind of person in the earlier category who was doing the with billions of dollars where you think i mean it looks you know it sounds like they're trying to make an example out of my i don't know why obama's always trying to appease the other side rather than those people who actually help to get him elected he just doesn't really care about breaking all those promises but if you think about it you know bob woodward how many books as you've written lately that are entirely made up of these secrets we've seen. many officials also that are high positions that leak secrets to newspapers we haven't even seen anybody really prosecute or you know put to trial for leaking the n.s.a. wiretapping story with the new york times so why would they do this to drake there's a standard clearly making an example of him in fact the one person who did it in it to leaking to the new york times and to being one of their sources tom tim has been

has been clear they're not going to prosecute him so the only person to be prosecuted out of that is still ongoing five years long multimillion dollar investigation that has eaten up five prosecutors and twenty five f.b.i. agents one person tom drake and i think that's another reason they feel like they need to bring home a scalp to show for all of their work and he is a case where they don't have to actually go after the reporter and therefore they don't have to pick a fight with the media in going after him clearly they're making an example of him clearly this is all about politics and has nothing to do with justice all the more reason to point out there and consistencies them thank you so much for joining us tonight you very much for having thanks.

for showing tell on tonight's program now last time we discussed how thousands of people are being held in solitary confinement in u.s. prisons while america prides itself on its human rights record so analysts have declared solitary confinement as a form of torture we wanted to know if you felt the same way about this level of punishment so let's go to producer for treason essentially to find out what our viewers think. how would you feel if you were locked in a bathroom with steel doors and no windows for twenty three or twenty four hours a day maybe a few hours a week you're allowed to step outside into a concrete pan the size of two mid-sized cars there's no t.v. there's no phone calls or people to talk to for years and years without change if i did that for my job i think that is p.c. i would be knocking on my door in no time yet this is what us prisons do to tens and thousands of inmates every day in solitary confinement so is it torture on facebook a mind answer retold a solitary confinement is horrific and is

a crime against humanity ffion baretta greed it's in the main but only if long stephens on the other hand he disagrees torture or not he says is usually well urt but rudolph reminded us on you tube people in solitary confinement are not just violent inmates but also those forced into it by fears of attack that's right prisoners don't even need to hurt anyone just be afraid that someone may hurt and it end up locked away in the same conditions i take or some of you may not like the comparison i own to people who grew up on the streets and was abused when i doubted him he ended up biting a neighbor and the town said he was a danger to people and wanted to keep them in a small concrete double fence area actually instead i ended up taking him to training three times a week if he could be trusted and now he's fine around people basically what i'm telling you here is that locking him away wouldn't have done any good so maybe what

the us prison systems need is to stop long periods solitary confinement and start providing better training for those pitbulls. all right thanks patrice and here's our next question for you at home we just finished is causing the sex scandal the mounting problems that are facing the i.m.f. so it's the world's biggest lenders wreaking havoc on underdeveloped and troubled countries around the world should the u.s. still continue to be associated with that we want to know what you think do you think the u.s. should continue to fund it i am that you can respond to us on facebook twitter and you tube and who knows your response just might make it on air now we're taking a break but still to come tonight he's trying to restore honor now he's trying to restore courage back with our schools from a war for his latest plan to save the world and then if you're struggling to pay the bills tonight report on the growing number of americans who are being harassed by debt collectors all the u.s. government can get away with just borrowing more money and never paying up archies arena portnoy reports of combat.