but can they load a show at the real headlines with none of them or see can we live out of washington d.c. and how is the i.m.f. found a new leader we'll give you details on who looks to be next in line for the position and why this camera is facing criticism from the bricks then what's gone into robert gates just weeks before he's supposed to step down his admirable stance on bloated military spending is no longer a part of his speech so is a sign that military growth is unstoppable then we'll ask. miss the point after

airing a documentary on bradley manning and weiqi leaks we can't help but notice everything that wasn't included so is the mainstream media incapable of telling the full story and nobody seems to have a problem with extending the patriot act only a lonely few politicians have stepped forward to at least try and force a debate so it was such a little outcry we want to know when a defending the fourth amendment a human fringe idea and discuss all of that i will bring you tonight's happy hour at the end of the show but first up our top story. well the sex scandal and resignation of i.m.f. chief dominique strauss kahn has not only put increased strain on europe's still unresolved debt crisis it's also left a void in leadership and while the french have been quick to announce their finance minister christine legarde as a candidate this time around europe might not find it so easy the brics brazil russia india china and south africa have written an official letter reminding the i.m.f. that the world is changing and the financial institutions leadership needs to reflect that so if the brakes do indeed revolt considering that western nations are the

ones over indebted and needing all the help right now but with a record questions before europe could it be a little bit of payback joining me to discuss this is gregory white editor of money game for the business insider greg thanks. so much for joining us tonight for starters obviously europe is still reeling from the fact. that involved in a massive sex scandal had to resign and they're looking for new leadership but does this letter also shake things up a bit does that does it deliver another blow well it certainly makes it not an easy process for them to get christine legarde in charge it's probably still going to happen but it's certainly the bricks stepping forth and saying look we want to deal out of this we want some sort of bargain we want an agreement that we at least permanently will get the next one or some other spot in the organization they want something out of this they're not going to go home empty handed well that's the thing is the brakes are saying that it's been said before when dominique strauss kahn took over that position that he would be the last year and head so did they

just hope they are to europe over the break so forget that those statements were made. i think that the thought they had a little bit of a lapse of memory yes but you know europe is doing looking out for it so thank considering the voting mechanisms within the organization it's really europe leading this along with the united states and unless the brits can persuade the united states to switch sides in terms of who it votes for maybe voting for mr carstens from mexico you're going to see things turned out just as you expect with the guard in charge what do you think of the greats have a point though that i don't know how about the leadership of the i.m.f. isn't based on your nationality but your qualifications. stephanie have a point i mean the people who are up right now for the role don't seem fit for it in terms of what we need right now in that leader that role being able to lead the global economy out of this debt crisis that we're in there are plenty of other potential candidates out there who have experience understanding markets emerging

markets not just developed markets you know not just europe they could fill into the role one example is mohamed el erian at pimco although he said he won't do it but you know that they really have kind of let themselves down picking a candidate that so expected like the guards of someone who can really revitalize the organization of this awful scandal and you think there's a bit of a double standard involved here too or maybe not even double standard but a conflict of interest to me the i.m.f. is notorious for in what many say would be raping underdeveloped or poorer nations around the world and yet taking it easy when it comes to european nations and now that it's the european nations very specifically that are the ones that are in trouble does it put the i.m.f. in at least in a bad position or are they being too easy on europe. i don't think the i.m.s. policies right now are too easy on europe they're instituting strong austerity measures they're making life difficult for greeks and irish people so they're sticking with the course i guess the europeans might hope that it would gardens is in charge will have more of a french touch to how they're dealing with things but obviously that and work with

the make stress on either so you know i don't know what they're hoping to get out of this thing still look bad for europe and it's not going to get easier for emerging markets countries that have debt problems either well things are looking really bad for europe and greece specifically i'm just wondering what you think your opinion is what do you think what's going to happen there or will they actually let greece fall. well in one side you have the e.c.b. the european central bank completely opposed to any sort of greek debt restructuring reprofiling or whatever you want to call it and on the other side you seem to have everybody else coming together saying this needs to happen the problem is if you let greek for greece fall it's going to affect everyone in the eurozone including all of these banks who still haven't fixed themselves since the crisis so you know in my mind they can't let it fall and if they do the prospects are going to be quite dark for europe for some time thereafter and i guess you could say the right now a lot of that is on germany's shoulders but let's just play with the idea for a moment that christine legarde or another european leader doesn't get to be the

head of the i.m.f. that it was somebody from a developing country or somebody from one of the breaks how do you think about a change of the policies of the i.m.f. . the i.m.f. is a longstanding organization with very clear policies in terms of what its people think you know the people who are in key jobs in the organization changing the head off the snake isn't going to alter the fact the snake still has the same it always had and that's it's going to be tough as it possibly can be on debtors state so i don't think having an emerging markets kind of at the top will change much the organization really as a whole needs revamp on its vision ok and so then how long until we really see a rebound i mean you know you could easily say that changing the head on the snake isn't going to change its bite but do you think of these bric nations believe they can change here that believe that just by changing the leadership that will somehow affect the structure or is this are just a little bit of posturing for more power. it's definitely posturing for more power

but you know two things would need to happen for the group states to have more control that's a be a more liberal organization and that's a powerful head that actually has the charisma to change the full organization and alteration in the voting rights and who has the real power inside the i.m.f. which means a decrease in the importance of the u.s. and european powers both of those things are on the agenda right now but that's part of the deal that might be sorted out for the brics i going to thank you very much for joining us tonight and we'll have to live to see what this sex scandal really does to shake things up if it's just another european leader then that means not much but maybe three years from now thanks so much. now i've got much more to come on tonight's show you may be retiring in june but defense secretary robert gates is making his stance clear cuts to the defense budget only cuts for america's safety wait a minute let me calling for cuts a few months ago we're going to get into his flip flop and p.b.s. unveiled a new documentary last night looking out the bradley manning case the man suspected

of leaking documents to wiki leaks this is more of a hit job than a journalistic look at the truth of the stuff that and more of them for. you that we get in the park. i think. we have a show here for safe get ready because of the freedom. a charmer over here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.

a new web site with twenty four seven live streaming news tells us what to do about the ongoing financial hard unlimited high quality videos for download. and still never names. the. most. watched. you guys welcome michel and tell me alone a show we've heard our guests have to say on the topic now we want to hear from our

audience just go on to you tube does video respond or the twitter verse part of the question that we post on you tube every monday and on thursday the show you all responses we let your voice be heard. are the sentiments of the arab spring spreading across the globe today yet another star one stalwart ally of the united states georgia faced trouble from its people as hundreds gathered outside the parliament building in b.c. demanding the resignation of president mikheil saakashvili and protesters were met brutally with tear gas and rubber bullets from georgian police so one can only wonder which way saakashvili might go only be ousted by his people saying this was in a bar or will be he's somehow been able to hold on to that power but he could be updated on this developing situation. now his time is finally come robert gates will be stepping down as secretary of defense in june and leon panetta is going to be taking over but just

a weeks before gates officially leaves it seems as if we're seeing a new and very different side of the man who once spoke out against bloated defense spending so why is a man who is seen as a reformer now against further cuts to the military budget scale and ford has more . as robert gates winds down his time as secretary of defense. he isn't as eager to wind down america's six hundred ninety billion dollars a year in military spending even as the us bases a one point five trillion dollars deficit the defense budget is not the cause of the deficit and debt problem that we have as a country. once the secretary who's announced no bid contracts and redundant military spending in the war on terror the attacks of september eleventh two thousand and one opened a gusher of defense spending that nearly doubled the base budget over the last decade the gusher has been turned off and will stay or use his last weeks in office to warn that too many cuts could spell danger for the united states it is important

that we not repeat the mistakes of the past were tough economic times when the winding down of a military campaign leads to steep and unwise reductions and defense he also warned against closing some of the u.s. has more than one thousand military bases worldwide our record of predicting where we will use military force since vietnam is perfect we have never once gotten it right. there is there isn't a single instance in grenada panama the first gulf war. the balkans eighty. zero a military spending increased by twenty point six billion in two thousand and ten and nineteen point six billion of that was the u.s. alone other countries are closing deficits by reducing their defense dollars the united kingdom for instance has started the process that started the process greece and turkey which had

a long time rivalry have had discussions about mutual reductions. virtually all the countries in europe face this problem. at the pentagon budget continues to grow. the outgoings that. material defense also called for a continued u.s. presence in iraq even as president obama's timetable mandates a total withdrawal by the end of the year i hope to figure out a way to. and i think the united states will be willing to say yes when the former defense contractor michael o'brien says the gap is likely to be filled by defense contractors we want to keep the number of shoulders. because it's a political hot potato but nobody bats an eye when one hundred thousand contractors were to the theater of operations. some analysts say america's military spending is too powerful for any defense secretary to control whether he heads into the private sector to lobby was part of this revolving door culture there or not and still i

think feels protective toward interest he also recognizes that. pentagon is big business in the united states as robert gates prepares to him the reins of the pentagon over to leon panetta at the end of june he says quote all of the low hanging fruit have not only been but they've been stopped and crushed but basing threats across the board many americans say they want to see the pentagon tighten its belt as well healing for our key washington d.c. . defense budget for fiscal year two thousand and twelve has not been fully approved by congress but so far that number is at a whopping six hundred sixty seven seventy six me billion dollars and that's including the hundred eighteen billion that it's costing us to continue the wars in iraq and afghanistan because that even cover the half of it as all of the low hanging fruit really been plucked as the defense secretary says and what made robert gates make such a drastic flip flop anyway here to discuss this with me is christopher hellman

senior policy analyst at the national priorities project christopher thank you so much for joining us tonight let's start off let's start first of all with this this concept of the all of the low hanging fruit has been plucked some oh i find that just incredibly incredibly hard to believe and you think of a few waste of all military programs out there that could be plus maybe that second engine for their thirty five. well i knew you'd be absolutely right i think it's important to keep in mind that when we talk about defense spending if you if you pull the cost of the wars in iraq and can stand out of the equation we're currently spending more on the military now than we have in any point during our history since world war two and that. over the last decade military spending has gone up about forty percent adjusted for inflation so we're in a situation now where we have a much larger defense budget than we did even a decade ago and relating at the war costs as is is inappropriate so then you start thinking about what types of weapons systems that you might go after and there are

some that you might want to go after the joint strike fighter engine is one you mentioned but but really what we need to be doing is not thinking about weapon systems rethinking what the role of the military out of the international security strategy i think one of the things to which you write about extensively is that it's not just the military when we think about the defense costs or what it really costs to run our wars and we hear about a defense budget bill that might be six hundred seventy six billion dollars that really doesn't account for a lot of it what other numbers can you throw in there for us but the first one you want to look at obviously is homeland security portion of that is funded through the department of defense but we're going to spend about fifty five billion dollars on homeland security outside the fence this coming year and that's up dramatically from before the nine eleven attacks for obvious reasons and then the other big number is the hundred twenty or hundred thirty billion dollars we'll spend on veterans benefits and veterans health care next year and that's a number that will continue to rise as both the number of veterans and health care

costs in this country continue to skyrocket so those are two obvious ones you might look at and then there are some other things that we can calculate as well but really it's important keep in mind that supporting a middle of the largest and most one of the largest and the most efficient military in the world has costs outside of just the defense budget. and that's why i'm wondering what it is that made the fence secretary robert gates suddenly change his tune maybe realize that perhaps once he leaves that position if he wants to get another job he should be criticizing these people or calling for a cuts did he have a change of heart did he just had to feed it by the entire system what do you think went on now i think what happened was going to go on after years of you know as he refers to an open spigot spending he realizes that you know if you're a fiscal constraints are actually going to have to live with within their budgetary means and this is something they're not prepared to do so you know what he's doing is really firing a warning shot at policymakers to say look if you're serious about this the way the

military budget is currently structured it's going to it's going to require some real pain we're not going to be able to get away with the kind of salami slicing that we've done in the past but at the same time he's not advocating for fewer missions quite the opposite he's saying that if you do have more cuts then you have fewer missions he's the person out there the saying that we should stay in iraq past the agreed timeline for our troops to withdraw so do you think that defense secretary gates is still showing a little bit of what his policy what is the outlook is which is to continue these wars oh there's an irony of several months ago for instance at a speech he gave at west point he spoke to the issue of you know continuing to have these large military operations and he said that you know the next commander in chief or the next military leadership if they if they undertake this type of large boots on the ground operation they should quote have their head examined unquote so it's not entirely clear to me where the secretary is on this he's even made a range of statements that are that are you know in many ways internally

inconsistent and i wonder do you think of that kind of proves to us that the secretary of defense is more of a politician than everyone thinks that he might be because when he talks about staying in iraq of course you can say that there's the iranian threat there but for the most part he saying that it's because iraq is a shining example of democracy in that region. well i think that i think iraq owes us with with a lot of different issues that we have to address but at the end of the day what it really boils down to is does the iraqi government do the iraqi people want to say if they don't we can't it's as simple as that but you're right point out that like all high ranking officials in the administration secretary of defense is a political job like any other. now christopher so he's giving perhaps a warning here to members of congress you say what it will actually take for all of this military spending to ever end i just can't seem to understand the fact that

now we have reached our debt ceiling lawmakers can agree on not the one thing they can always agree on is to pass these defense authorization bill that is to pass another patriot act anything that expands the surveillance state of the military state and the state of our wars seems to go through very usually with that. yeah i mean. if you were soft on communism it was a political liability nowadays if you're soft on terrorism it's a political liability but the fact the matter is as we discussed earlier we're at record levels of military spending right now there's plenty of room within a five hundred fifty billion dollar defense budget you do things we want to do and what's interesting to point out is that the military is currently slated to get more money than they currently do and if we just froze the military budget at its current level of justice for inflation over the next decade we could achieve almost all of the four hundred billion dollars in savings that the secretary so concerned about right now. also an interesting thing on the secretary's way out before he leaves in june is that it's president barack obama who is the one that's asking for

those four hundred billion dollars in cuts which really is not that much as you said over time but i wonder if he's trying to send a message there and what that might mean for the administration especially as we on panetta goes into that role christopher i want to thank you very much for joining us tonight my pleasure thanks for having me. on for weeks now p.b.s. has been teasing its documentary that aired last night called wiki secrets an extensive look at wiki leaks as an organization julian assange and most importantly p.f.c. bradley manning the military analyst accused of leaking the classified documents to the organization so did they find something new a link between a songe manning could a publicly funded mainstream media organization give an objective and detailed look at the whole story unfortunately we saw none of that we got the picture of a young military analyst who was gay who had been picked on for a small stature who couldn't hold a steady job and was troubled. talking about his personal life his relationships and his experiences in the military and spirits as they're called.

says the person also contacted him the e-mail and they became friends on facebook. it was grandly manning intelligence analyst in iraq. and we also heard from numerous journalists and a former wiki leaks member who talked about julian assange is someone with no regard for human life and he published the names of collaborators and informants we were told the agent in lama the hacker turned informant who handed over his chats with manning was just trying to do the right thing nothing new a lot of incrimination with no evidence and perhaps most importantly a failure of a journalistic organization to talk about how we can leaks has affected journalism how it started to date and cause the government to do everything in its power to bring it down joining me from our studio in new york to discuss this is kevin costello freelance assistant apa nation magazine kevin i want to thank you very much for joining me tonight now if you were an average american that perhaps hasn't

been extensively following this the wiki leaks story and you were sitting on your couch last night and you watch this frontline documentary what's the message that you would come away with. well i believe that the message in this documentary is that there was this large intelligence breach the largest perhaps in the history of the united states it's impacted the entire world it's put a lot of stress on our diplomats and it looks like the p.b.s. producers do not believe that that stress is something that is justified that if they had done anything embarrassing they should have to pay for it and be held accountable and it seems that if you were watching you would have seen at least implicitly it's really hinted at and they don't do a good job of view bunking it they claim to say that julian assange was able to defend against it but they're trying to as you said in the. leed create this link between manning and assigns and they have people like eric schmidt who is just

speculating and suggesting that there is this link well one of the things that i found the most interesting is that they really go after bradley manning when they claim to tell his story but they it sounds it seems incriminating to me i'm wondering if you agree with me here because they tell you the story of this troubled young man like i said who couldn't hold a job who was battling against don't ask don't tell and policies that he didn't like and you know only maybe once or twice did we hear the word allegedly only david howell is towards the end of this entire documentary remember minded everybody of the fact that he has now been convicted of anything yet that's exactly correct and you know greg mitchell at the nation pointed this out in his review and you know i noted this as well which is the fact that you don't really get to see that there might have been some sort of moral values at play when bradley manning decided to allegedly leak the material to wiki leaks there's no mention of the fact

that in baghdad he was compelled when he saw information on abuse and possible war crimes and then he thought that because he took an oath to defend the constitution that he should leak the material because this was wrong so why is that why would a journalistic organization. do that why would they look at the debate over journalism here why wouldn't they look at what it really needs to be a whistleblower and why certain people do it why wouldn't they talk to people like daniel ellsberg and really try to uncover what might have been behind it but i think that it's a creative choice because i can see coming from a background in documentary production there. big complicated things to get into those complex issues the discussion about how would you like says impact in journalism all the little legal questions that are raised that the major stuff of whether

a journalist can be prosecuted under the espionage act those are really sticky issues and the one key thing is that in order to really dig into this you would have to be adversarial towards power you have to challenge the authorities some of these people who are in the film would have had to be asked some tough questions and it looks like the p.b.s. producers took the easy way out and it is it's much more it's a lot easier to just talk about the criticisms that have been leveled against wiki leaks julian assigns and even bradley manning so then he asked you know if you watch the mainstream media coverage of this story you can say over the last year or so if not even longer did they just fall into the same boat as the rest of the mainstream media. yeah i think they do i think they didn't really dig all that deep there's there's not much new in this documentary unless you haven't been following the stories and i think that there is some information here that is good

that fulfills some sort of a public good because you are getting a presentation of the story of what is unfolding but unfortunately it's been if you had to i mean look at its core martin smith went into this interview with giuliana songe you can see the full interview that we do you leaks leaked and posted on its website last night just as the program was about to air and at the beginning and during you can see martin smith justifying why is there and really just saying look i have to ask you these questions because these criticisms are out there but then julian assange says no you don't want the critics that the frame but the problem for p.b.s. and other organizations is that their status as a journalist in the whole social structure of the united states is in jeopardy if they take any sort of adversarial stance towards power and i think that

we definitely see that a lot if there is anybody that you wish was in this documentary that would have given it a better a fuller picture because julian assigns was the only way he leaks supporter in the entire thing and that's obvious because hey he's the co-founder who do you think they should have spoken to. well i think that glenn greenwald would have been a good choice he actually broke a story and got an award for it and it had to do with bradley manning's confinement i also think that amy goodman could have been a good source to go to i kind of question why they didn't put daniel ellsberg on camera for an interview yes he appears in a protest that clotted go but they don't actually get his point of view which i think is very you know it's important i mean he was the one who leaked the pentagon papers and he has the most credibility in talking about whistleblowers and how governments will come after you and you know in his case the trial that he faced the charges they fell through the government was not able to make

a case and and he's made a lot of arguments that the same thing that happened with bradley manning and we're going to get his take on this tomorrow coming up on our show having i want to thank you very much for joining us tonight thank you. coming up next the toughest sheriff in america is tonight's tool time winner for having criminals inside some departments and then defending the fourth amendment in the us some lawmakers are being called brainwashed brackley advocating for rights guaranteed to you in the constitution that the reason joins me does test the issue in just a. wee . wee little bit there.