when you wake up in the morning do you care about the price of going. well ron paul and ben bernanke you certainly do and they're duking it out over whether gold is money so will lawmakers use this golden opportunity to change the course of economic policy. and rolling with the popular crowd in vegas as libertarians gather for freedom fast so who are they actually part of the libertarian entourage and who is just on the fringe. and a story you won't see on mainstream news a silent war complete with secret cia sites we'll talk with a man shining

a light on the shadow war in somalia. it's thursday july fourteenth eight pm in washington d.c. and christine for us now you're watching our team. well let's start this evening with the economy where it seems to be at least here in washington what everyone is talking about not just the economy jobs lack of jobs and so it seems to the deficit and how to shrink it now just a few hours ago president obama and vice president biden met with lawmakers to talk about just that and the latest round of talks on coming to an agreement on raising the debt ceiling president obama was meeting with some of the highest ranking lawmakers after what was apparently a heated meeting yesterday in which obama reportedly stormed out of one person who won't be in today's meeting but does want obama's job as texas congressman ron paul

he is out with his first official campaign ad in which he gives his answer to the great debate over debt. reagan. and of course. we were. like well our party just repeat the mistakes of the big chill compromise. one candidate has always been true ron paul could spread well into the budget deal. no deals ron paul has said no repeatedly to the question of raising the debt ceiling and many others have raised the question about whether it's necessary some even asking is this all simply a scare tactic into making some significant changes to the way this government spends its money to talk more about that i spoke earlier to l. randall rae professor of economics at the university of missouri kansas city i asked him if we are in. in our close to

a crisis and politicians say we are or is this all just hype here's his response. well we're in a. creative crisis but it's a political crisis it's not an economic crisis. but sovereign government does not face the solvency constraint if it does to bolt on debt it will be a political decision that's not going to be something that is forced by markets. so you think that this is perhaps just an excuse by you know the forces out there to to try to get rid of some of these new deal social security medicare medicaid. fortunately i think the democrats helped to create this crisis and as i said democratic president really can kill you and your programs president clinton was the one who destroyed the regulation of financial sector that was put in place in

the aftermath of. nine hundred thirty s. create depression. rejected the economy and prevented another financial crash on the scale of the one nine hundred twenty nine crash up until the current crisis we had deregulated supervise facial institutions basically we let them eat what they had done back in one thousand twenty nine because i suppose so now it's up to obama to get rid of the best judges of the new deal which are the social safety net is protecting the population i want to talk more about it here the exchange that took place yesterday between texas congressman ron paul and fed chairman ben bernanke e over the actions both congress and the fed to have taken to deal with some of these problems that we've seen over the last three years i want to show you a little bit of that exchange in what seems to be two very different interpretations of what's going on ok a five point one trillion dollars didn't go to the consumers it went to buy.

banks that went to billing. companies and lo and behold the consumer getting this they lost their job they lost their houses mortgages and they're still in trouble you're mistaken in saying that the fed reserve has spent any money. you say five trillion we have lent money we have purchased security so it's not buying this not dissipating you know the money that we've gotten all the money back. thank you then went on to say that the fed has in fact been a profit center a money maker for the u.s. government and your thoughts on this notion is the fed actually you know a profit center. actually the number is probably closer to twenty nine trillion dollars if we count the total lending guaranteeing and buying of toxic waste assets undertaken by the fed and treasury twenty nine trillion dollars. i think that bernanke is playing that a little bit fast and loose the fed still has

a lot of toxic waste on its balance sheet probably it is valuing that it's something that will never be realized so i think the fed probably is going to take a loss on some of the toxic waste that are purchased possibly on some of the loans that it is may so i actually agree with that. i don't think we should have done it and the criticism that not much has trickled down to main street is obvious the money that the fed is lending and spending to buy toxic waste it's not getting out there into the economy or into the rest of the world if it were actually getting out into the economy we would not still being in a deep recession we wouldn't have an unemployment rate above nine percent the fact is that the money that is being created by the fed is called bank reserves it's all locked up and the reserves of the banks which actually are held at the fed they

don't get out into the economy it would only be if somehow the fed's actions had encouraged banks to start lending again and american consumers to start spending again and that dollars would be getting out into the u.s. and the world economy they are not. that was all rounder a professor of economics at the university of missouri kansas city. and for a different take on all the talk of gold being the answer to our economic woes i thought with scott carter your gold line and i asked him for his thoughts on this recent spike in gold in the price of gold rather after chairman ben bernanke his comments yesterday indicating the fed may be considering a stirred round of quantitative easing after what it all means and here's what he had to say. every time the federal reserve chairman bernanke he talks about stimulating the economy with more money gold goes up because investors know that that means that our current dollars are going to be well worth worse tomorrow than

they are today it seems like a simple breakdown there another interpretation of this that i want to share with you this one coming from russian prime minister vladimir putin i want to play this for you what he had to say and then i'll get your response when you slow fortunately or unfortunately we do not print reserve currencies but look at what they are doing tonight hooligans that is switching on the printing press twisting money around the whole world to filling their primary needs a state monopoly is bad that a statement concerns only someone else's monopoly well there's nothing bad about their monopoly monopoly for printing money and they're making the most of it but we cannot just forty we cannot shift all our expenses to a budget deficit all right scott so what do you think of this i mean the russian prime minister calling the fed who again for you know this this idea even the inconsiderate another round of quantitative easing. well that's right well i

wouldn't go so far as the name calling but i think the core of the point is that we are stimulating our economy we're paying our bills by printing more money and the whole world is doing that christine not just the u.s. the fact is the e.u. is bailing out these countries they're bailing them out with money that they don't have so the bottom line is we've got a sovereign debt crisis around the world here in the u.s. and certainly in europe and countries that have their own currency the way they get out of them is to devalue the current currency to pay the future liabilities it's not good for people that are holding these currencies but it's the only way forward if you will to pay future obligations it's a terrible thing to to stayed in that's one of the big challenges we have not only in the u.s. but you're seeing a pulled in many countries around the world that's why many people are looking to hard assets all kanada days but gold and silver in particular are saying now we're seeing it unfold around the world and i think i certainly an example of this is in

switzerland that they were the last country to abandon the gold standard i think that was back and in two thousand and already their parliament seems to be getting ready to talk about some serious that's to return to rate your thoughts about that . well i think it's interesting switzerland is still has a relation to their policy their monetary policy to the gold they hold is very high it's around forty percent it's no coincidence that the swiss franc is a very strong currency right now the fact is that the experiment we've been through the fia currency for the last forty years when president nixon took us off the gold standard has not worked out well we have devalued our paper currencies gold has gone up and that's why there's consideration for many not only ron paul but steve forbes and others to talk about having some sort of modified gold standard where fior currencies are anchored by hard assets to limit the printing of them so that we don't continue to just devalue the currency that we have today i think that the

federal reserve and central bankers will be the last to admit that gold is money they are vested at the feet currency level paper money and in good faith and credit dollars but when you look at history when you look at the financial markets when you look at investors clearly gold and silver a functioning more than just as a commodity they're seeing it as a hedge against a declining dollar so even though it's technically not a currency it's certainly being played at the hedge against the dollar the dollar and declining fees currency and i think that will continue so the market has a funny way of determining what gold and silver has real value proposition is regardless of what the federal chairman bernanke he says and i think ron paul stated that the average american they think gold is money even though you can't go down to the street and literally use that as minted currency today will there be a time when that could happen i don't know that was caught carter c.e.o. of goldman. so right now in las vegas a whole lot of people who share

a lot of the idea of ron paul are gathering for this year's freedom fast a lot of them identify politically as a libertarian so what if it actually means ron paul embodies many libertarian ideas but it's. earning for president as a republican so many members of the tea party aligned themselves with libertarians it's a movement that no doubt it's gaining popularity which is why we want to dig a little deeper into what it means more and more libertarianism is being touted in the mainstream media but what are they getting right and what are they getting wrong earlier i spoke to a lot of mercer a libertarian columnist for world that daily dot com and author of this book into the cannibal pot muffin for america from the host of hard times south africa we talked about the foundations of libertarianism and i asked her who she saw as part of this new class of libertarian lights of course my heroes in the political arena are our ron cool without

a tie rand paul and financier peter schiff great people all. my column libertarianism right was life was actually addressing. a. segment of the libertarian movement that is being touted as the only brandel the only strand in fox news and news and in particular is their cultural perspective and i was addressing in particular the segment i think it was on stuff so where. it took about an hour to expound on the proposition that. lady gaga glee m.t.v. dennis rodman madonna was the quintessential elements of american freedoms which of course classical liberal psych myself would think as. well that's

the libertine faction of the movement and it's a series within a larger category of liberty but i think you would agree a wanna bet that you know some of these ideals are really starting to catch on to become very popular i've covered a lot of tea party rallies here in washington and a lot of the people i speak to identify as libertarians and so i guess to paint as a picture here of what you think is sort of on the french people who don't maybe understand what the foundation of the movement actually yes. i think it goes back to the founding fathers and i like to call myself a classical liberal rather than a libertarian because batches of it is often identified with the libertarianism like i do address in my column classical liberalism of the nineteenth century certainly in society the freedom of the individual to do as he pleases which includes all the. the bitchiness facets of. the things extolled

on that particular show and counterculture issues but the main issues the authentic libertarian will emphasize is the rights to life liberty and property and i would property above all in fact i was i want to mercer author in the retiring columnist for world net daily dot. well new evidence out about the expanding role of the cia and it intensified at countering tech counterterrorism efforts in somalia this is not simply a case of more agents on the ground there but an increase of drone attacks of targeted strikes and most significantly of secret of a secret prison run by the cia just down in the nation magazine a new investigative report details how the cia trained somali intelligence agents and operatives and plans missions directed at members of the islamic militant group al-shabaab but we've to have close ties to al qaeda and this is important because

the article is called the cia's secret sites in somalia and it was written by a national security correspondent journey scahill a hell of course also wrote the bestselling book blackwater the rise of the world's most powerful mercenary army he's in our new york studios and joins us with a very inside look after spending ten days on the ground in somalia hey there jeremy i guess i want to start by asking you about this secret prison what does that look like and more importantly what's going on inside. right well officially the prison is run by the somali national security agency but in a way it's sort of a distinction without a difference because the cia is paying the salaries directly of somali intelligence agents including those that work at this prison the prison is inside the compound of what's called villa somalia which is the green zone of sorts where the us back somali government has its headquarters in mogadishu and it's housed in the basement of the national security agency where there are also some cia operatives base and

inside this dungeon prison there are no windows there is no sunlight there's a bedbug infestation according to prisoners who've been there mosquitoes all over the place the air is moist thick and disgusting some prisoners are said to be losing their minds there are also reports from prisoners that there were very young boys inside of the prison some people have been held for eighteen months without charge without access to lawyers without access to the red cross in fact the red cross told me that they were not aware of the prison and that they've never been given access to it and among those being held in prison are people that were actually kidnapped snatched from neighboring kenya by kenyan intelligence officials and taken rendered by aircraft to this prison in mogadishu my understanding also in a u.s. official that i interviewed confirm this is that at least one prisoner there was taken based on u.s. intelligence provided to the kenyan forces and then rendered to somalia where he

has been interrogated by u.s. interrogators the americans say that they don't directly interrogate the prisoners outside of the presence of somali agents and they prefer to call it be brief thing instead of interrogation but that's not what the somalis who work with the cia told me they said the cia directly interrogate prisoners whenever it wants i think it's so interesting jeremy that you make the thinkin of how there isn't actually a distinction in the u.s. is paying these people and their presence there. they're using the intelligence to lead to this this was to me very shocking and it's not just another cia mission this is the u.s. being involved in some way of snatching people off the streets as you said of having them interrogated in a place considered to have you know the worst humanitarian disaster in the world as you also said there's no red cross there's no journalists other than then you were there and no accountability i guess i'm wondering why i didn't see you talking about this on every channel today i were very happy to have you here but do you

think people realize the significance of this. well i know for a fact that journalists from sac that journalists from several major american news outlets were aware of these facilities in mogadishu and it's for those networks to answer why they've never reported on it despite the fact that it's a very very serious issue that should be investigated by congress and the red cross and in fact the obama administration itself but i you know i can't answer questions for other media outlets but what i would say is that a.b.c. news in particular ran a story on their website which is that a huge media outlet in the united states ran a story on their website that completely mischaracterize my story and allowed the cia to to shoot down strawman arguments that i hadn't made by asking them to respond to things that i didn't report both c.n.n. and a.b.c. have allowed their facilities their media outlets to use this conveyer belts for

the spin of the cia and that's the job of the cia and they do it well but the job of major media outlets should not be to be a conveyor belt for the propaganda of u.s. intelligence agencies so i would leave those those questions for other media outlets as to why they're not reporting on this very serious life and death issue that has to do very much with the rule of law in this country and whether or not there's been any change when it comes to respect of international human rights laws and standards and or the u.s. constitution that's really interesting i guess to me and anything that you want to clear up here that you feel like was mischaracterized about your story. i'll give you that opportunity. well i mean look what i did but what happened is that you know a some hack sitting in the pentagon bureau of a.b.c. news needs to justify his salary and he either didn't read my article or just was so easy to spin that it came natural to him when that when he was approached by a us official said that i had reported that the u.s.

was running a counterterrorism detention facility in somalia what i had reported is exactly what i said and that is that the u.s. is paying the salaries of the somali agents that it is officially run by the somalis but that u.s. agents are able to openly interrogate them they have a.b.c. that made the focus of the story we don't have any black sites we're not running a black site inside of somalia and implied to my story needed to be undermined because it wasn't true the fact of the matter is that the obama administration announced in january of two thousand and nine the president himself that he was going to be shutting down these black sites leon panetta then the director of cia said in april of two thousand and i that he was decommissioning the black sites and what i am covered there is that the u.s. is using semantics to get around the fact that a black site is being utilized by the cia whether they officially own the lease of the building is irrelevant they're making use of that facility so by not reporting the actual facts of what we reported which no u.s.

official with this we can dispute because they're true a.b.c. was a willing participant in a cia spin operation and let's talk about you mentioned you know the obama administration and some of the ideas that they've touted i know that one of candidate obama's biggest arguments with was talking about overturning some of these bush era policies and you know i guess i thought during these last couple years i was going to see some of these prisons shut down when in fact we're seeing new ones opening talk a little bit about that. well you know the obama administration created this clause i don't remember the exact phrase but they said that there was some something like special considerations that would allow them to continue all of those policies that they claim to be against on the campaign trail and so they're sort of using a loophole in their own rhetoric to justify it behind the scenes and you know what i think is of primary should be a primary concern to two americans that are concerned about rule of law is that as

the u.s. expands its military operations and its covert operations in somalia and elsewhere in east africa as well as in yemen the administration should be required to define for the american people exactly what laws are governing these operations for instance there was a somali man who was transferred in early july to new york who had been snatched off of a ship in the gulf of aden and taken for two months to a u.s. naval ship held incommunicado without charge with no access to lawyers now he's being charged in a federal court when the center for constitutional rights asked the obama administration what legal justification they had to hold him in that manner the administration didn't have an answer for it so what we're seeing is president obama who himself is a constitutional law expert seeming to raise serious constitutional challenges with his own policies as commander in chief and as president that totally and very interesting journey i guess i got to ask you this though

a lot of these that much more targeted missions they seem to be thought of the new era of this so-called war on terror and many see the osama bin laden targeted killing as a successful one as something that you know they want to see more of so i want to get your response to those who say this is exactly what the u.s. government should be doing you know gathering intelligence carrying out missions aimed at terrorists no matter where in the world they are. well i mean the bin laden hit is is going to be the stuff of lore and hollywood films and there's going to be the can't kill bin laden movie and disney trademarked literally trademark the term seal team six and that's what everyone's going to know about us targeted killing in the joint special operations command unless they actually are paying attention what they don't know is that this same force that killed bin laden just a year earlier killed two pregnant women and an afghan police official in a botched raid that was based on bad intelligence turning that family against united states that there have been scores of night raids conducted by these forces

in afghanistan and pakistan in yemen and somalia where innocent people have been killed or when someone that they meant to kill was killed but scores of innocent people were killed along with them so if we're going to get into the business of making assassinations our norm and that's really what these are assassinations then we need to be ready for the blowback because we're creating a whole new generation of enemies that wouldn't normally have been our enemies because we've killed people in their family especially those who have done no wrong and were the victims of bad intelligence it's a very dangerous game and it's become the obama administration's policy john brennan announced a few weeks ago no more big occupations it we're all in the business of surgical strikes which is a code word for assassinations all right jeremy scahill author and investigative journalist if you haven't read his article in the nation magazine and definitely check it out turning now to what is turning out to be an avalanche of the scandal and of course started with media mogul rupert murdoch's british tabloid news of the world and charges that it hacked into accounts murder victims. but it is now clear

this is rapidly expanding the f.b.i. has just opened an investigation into allegations rupert murdoch's news corps sought to hack into the phones of victims of the september eleventh terrorist attacks this is major news for a man many view as the king of an empire and it also begs a closer look into the tabloid industry in great britain some pundits here have compared news of the world to t.m.c. but you know british tabloids actually are far more significant and powerful in many cases they are the kingmakers if you're running for office in the tabloid like you that can be your ticket to victory these tabloids have a huge circulation so if this empire collapses there could be some massive repercussions r.c.l. are and it takes a look deeper into the rise and fall of news of the world. rupert murdoch's push to expand in british media has come to a halt public and political rage over the phone hacking the sports news corp to

drop its bid to buy satellite broadcaster b. sky b. but some say he's already killed the british press and they were saying it as far back as one thousand nine hundred eighty one that's when he went on a media spending spree and bought amongst others the world renowned times newspaper news international has been playing a toxic part of our public life for so long but it worked under his ownership circulation just kept on rising in a market that killed off others and sky t.v. a loss making and obscure satellite network rocketed to become the biggest player in the u.k.'s pay t.v. market i do admire rupert murdoch because he's a risk taker when he bought the times and sunday times of london the newspaper business absolutely in peril in the u.k. mostly because of the unions and because of some other economic factors he turned that around. basically there are people who will say that he saved the newspaper

industry in london because of the whopping revolution and i don't need research but now it's clear that success came with a heavy price tag morality murdoch's journalist kept ratings high high wire and exploiting the vulnerable they hacked the private voice mails of families of dead soldiers and murdered children essentially we've seen criminality and invasion of privacy on a staggering industrial scale not even the rich and powerful could escape them chancellor gordon brown's baby was splashed over the front page of the sun his illness a sick headline royal family phones were hacked the scandal even goes right to the heart of the police force senior police officers were bribed by journalists for tipoffs on sensitive investigations private lives were made public. now we've got the fact is to be some hacking into gordon brown's private life you have to

start us off wonder what else is in and of course the honeyed not just from back it is now the use of what we call blanket these people played to change information from what should be private sources medical records tax where will it's taken thirty years for the worst fears about the first express to come true country they have murdoch may own successful newspapers in an ailing market but their papers which at last the greatest asset the public's trust the u.k. has more c.c.t.v. cameras per person than anywhere else in the world i've counted eight just in this small car park so preston always know big brother is watching but the question now is what's big brother watching for and more importantly who's trying to bribe him so we're at it aleksey london and that is all the time we have this evening for more on the stories we covered go to our t.v. .