welcome the loner show where you get the real headlines with none of them or see me live in washington d.c. now tonight we're going to speak with thomas drake former n.s.a. official and whistleblower about his case and the obama administration's war on leakers and will look at the pentagon spin machine regarding the delhi helicopter crash in afghanistan left thirty u.s. service members debt yesterday the military told us that they got the guy that shot the helicopter down but don't really believe them and then let's talk about polygamy why do so many americans disapprove of it does it affect their view of mormon's people like presidential candidates mitt romney and jon huntsman and can polygamy and democracy go hand in hand we're going to look at all of that and more tonight including a dose of happy hour but first let's take a look at what the mainstream media has decided to miss.

the riots in london and other english cities haven't quite stopped but they are quieting down could be because british prime minister david cameron has had the authority start cracking down. british prime minister david cameron says his government is acting aggressively to restore order following some deadly riots was much more action in the court as judges stayed on the bench all night to process hundreds of arrests in the weeks rioting and looting david cameron promising that there would be raids to try to hunt down some of the people responsible for the violence and that could be a clampdown on social media and the use of black because. that as you hear that last part there there could be a clampdown on social media let me finish fill you in on the details here british prime minister david cameron was addressing parliament today about the riots and he was discussing the role that twitter facebook and blackberry messenger plate when he said that he's working with the police with the intelligence services and

industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services as and to shut them off as an censor that he then added that the free flow of information can be used for good but it also can be used for gee i think if you really just occur or did that just occurred to you mr prime minister you know unfortunately that's the way the world works but if you're going to live in a country that abides by the principles of free speech the ports the free flow of information then you have to support that free flow of information at all times you can't just pick and choose based on whether you think it's being used for good or for ill it just doesn't work that way especially if you criticized arab nations that we saw a clampdown on social media during the uprisings of the last eight months which western nations did but now the u.k. wants to clamp down and it's supposed to be ok because it's the west that's doing it talk about hypocrisy now don't get me wrong i'm not saying that this is in

defense of the violence of the looting that has taken place during these riots this is about something much greater than that and by the way mr cameron social media has also been used throughout these riots for british residents to organize cleaning crews to warn other individuals about avoiding areas that were particularly violent. but the thing that really gets me is that after cameron made this announcement well where is hillary clinton our secretary of state is not only launched initiatives worth millions of dollars but constantly spoken out about the need for that belief free flow of information internet is a network that magnifies the power and potential of all others and that's why we believe it's critical that it's users are assured certain basic freedoms the goal is not to tell people how to use the internet any more than we ought to tell people how to use any public square whether it's tahrir square or times square the value of these spaces derives from the variety of activities people can pursue in them

from holding a rally to selling their vegetables to having a private conversation. interesting right that we haven't heard a peep now that it's our best friends are all this ally that wants to restrict those freedoms and the mainstream media they don't even bother to call them out on it they don't even bother asking the state department even making the connection that there is some hypocrisy at play here and that throwing this idea around could be a very dangerous step toward censorship in england and it really makes you wonder what our government would do if we were to ever see the same type of rights here in the us i'm betting that they would also want to clamp down on social media and i'm betting because we've now seen examples of it surrounding the events in the u.k. that are mainstream media would be happy to miss all those contradictions.

now let's go back to a subject that we've spent so much time covering here on this show the obama administration's war against whistleblowers and government leaks now we spoke in great depth about the case of thomas drake former n.s.a. senior official who the government tried to convict of ten felony charges some by using the. to be an object when in reality drake has shared information about waste fraud and abuse of the n.s.a. with a reporter from the baltimore sun and none of that information was classified now it also took the justice department two and a half years to indict him after raping his home after years of persecution by the government the threat of thirty five years behind bars and the financial burden of fighting for his freedom just a few months ago off the charges were suddenly dropped and drake pled guilty to only one misdemeanor charge of unauthorized computer access now what's important to note here is that this was a case carried over from the bush administration and then pursued actively by the obama administration the same administration that promised to be the most open and the most transparent yet the same one that's launched

a full war on whistleblowers and has had to use the espionage act to press criminal charges in five different cases of alleged national security leaks more prosecutions than all other administrations combined so now that one of those cases has been a result let's hear the firsthand account joining me to discuss this is thomas drake former senior executive with the n.s.a. and n.s.a. whistleblower and his attorney jesselyn radek national security and human rights director for the government accountability project the nation's leading whistleblower organization want to thank both of you for being here tonight now thomas i'm going to start with you because this is been going on for the last couple of years of your life and just a few months ago you face to face the possibility of possibly spending thirty five years behind bars and now you're not going to now it's over how does that feel extraordinary really. did this entire experience did it ruin your life or at least the last couple of years of your life i mean you were labeled a traitor you were demonized i can't even imagine the emotional stress the

financial stress of this is placed on you or do we want to be american or any human being to go through but would you do it again do you fundamentally believe in the information that you did pass on and the value of it yes particularly with issues of public concern that raise serious. about the conduct of our government so let's get into what some of those issues were exactly because you always stood by the fact that none of the information you put out there was classified information that you you know carried it gave over to the to the baltimore sun and for you what was that what is that information mean especially talk about some of the leaks that you put out there well why primarily was focused on sharing billion dollar fraud waste and abuse on a major program it was a flagship program for n.s.a. at the time but i also discovered that the government had engaged in illegal activity with respect electronic surveillance of americans in clear violation of the statute in the constitution and how many times did you try to get this information out there before you went to the baltimore sun when you had other

people that were trying to work with you that recognize that this was wrong you tried to report it to people that were superior within the same marking the station it was a multi-year effort it started from within and it's a reporting to my immediate superiors officer general counsel inspector general's office but then i was also a material witness on three major investigations two of them were nine eleven congressional investigations and one involve the department offense inspector general audit investigation of n.s.a. on this flight ship program and a clear legal alternative so this was a number of year long effort for you to try to get this information out there and what was the response that you always got when you tried to bring it up abysmal failure nothing was done but what do they tell you when you when you when you try to say we need to point we need to pay attention to this something's wrong and if they chose to cover it up remain in denial and choose to continue to pursue the decisions that have made it so didn't seem to matter it didn't seem to matter what was being actually called out is that why you then decided to go to the press if

you feel like that was the only option you had left at that point was a fateful decision because it was fraught with significant peril by very by virtue of actually going to reporters outside of the system outside of the formal reporting channels. it was fundamentally centered on my first amendment rights as an american to do so now what do you mean when you say reporter outside of the system you mean outside of washington d.c. outside of these so major publications that work closely with authorities by virtue of going to a reporter under the first amendment you know freedom of the press i was technically the ministry of oil lucian to do so in an authorized manner me if i did not have prior approval to have contact with a reporter in the free press that i was an administrative violation. i understand now just when i want to go over to you for a minute to because this case was going on there was a lot of media attention surrounding it and then suddenly we learned that all the charges were dropped that we were that the government was trying to get

a plea bargain and you ended up with only one misdemeanor was unauthorized access to a computer what really happened here why did that suddenly go away well i think the government thought on many occasions that they could get tom drake to plead guilty and he always said from the get go i refused to plea bargain with the truth and i have to say in my history of lawyering i have never seen a defendant reject so many plea bargains because they couldn't find one that actually fit any crime he committed it was to the point where it was like tom haven't you ever parked in the wrong parking space or you know spit on the sidewalk or anything but he steadfastly rejected please until we could find something that would actually fit what he did which was excessive authorized use of a government computer which pretty much every single government worker has done if they've ever checked facebook while at work. and yet that was still charged here

but the the federal judge in this case actually be rated the prosecutors he berated the government for the fact that it took two and a half years after they raided your home before they even indicted you and you know how did that feel to at least have somebody finally be on your side that is supposed to be you know upholding the law demonstration me that was our government called to do sure that they're actually holding executor burns to account for their actions now do you see a difference between what it is that you do this information was and was not classified excuse me yes of was it was unclassified that you leaked out there or do you see a difference between what you did and with we keep that information is classified but do you think that it still serves a purpose that it needs to be put out there to the press to actually yes i do all the different the distinction is that i released on classified disclose on closer information where the allegation in terms of what you weeks the events around that incident involved classified information that you support that we can release as an

alternative source in terms of a place to go now just what do you think of the fact that. the government tried to explain it when it was when it happened that the charges were dropped they again tried to use this idea of secrets and say that really what was going on here is there are too many secrets that we didn't want disclosed and the judge would have actually asked for that well that's the government's mean and that is a myth they say that they had to plead the case out because it would have revealed too much confidential information in point of fact they knew ahead of time that they had indicted him on information that had not been classified and they just figured he would fold under the enormous weight of the new leashing the full force of the entire executive branch and he didn't and they lost a string of rulings but believe me it had nothing to do with revealing secret information in point of fact this information turned out to be stuff that had been posted and seen by thousands on the n.s.a.

in trying that. but so why do you think that this is ministration did put their full force and full power behind this did they try to make an example of you do you feel like this is an intimidation tactic so that others don't leak information don't want to be whistleblowers all the above as that surprising to you as you the two of you just wrote an op ed recently where he said it's surprising that obama did this it's surprising but it's certainly not abuse become the norm it certainly has expanded the war it was a boar's. war now do either of you think that this type of war on whistleblowers that this excessive government surveillance excessive government secrecy is that something that can be stopped at this point are we just moving towards this perpetual ever expanding surveillance and secret classified state will be hard for a new scenario if that to occur if it doesn't stop i do feel like there's a lot of movement even disappointingly by obama towards expanding this secrecy

regime that was put into place by bush and the fact that obama has indicted more people under the espionage act of all things for mishandling classified information then all previous presidents combined sends a very chilling message and i think it's sort of a backdoor way to get an official secrets act which we don't have in this country in which we've managed to live for two hundred years without but you still think that it can be stopped you said of the latter situation would be a very chilling one but can it be stopped tell requires more exposure disclosure of governmental few since high crimes and misdemeanors availability and use of the cover of secrecy to hide all that is untouchable well that means that it requires more people like yourself that are actually willing to put yourself on the line and know that the results might be this type of persecution this you know the government going after you for a number of years but here you did prevail at the end i want to thank you very much for joining us tonight thomas and justin thank you. i'm not speaking for others.

now just ahead do you know where your congress members vacationing this summer or who is paying for that trip stick around for a very interesting story out of pentagon says that it's killed a taliban leader who shot down a u.s. helicopter in afghanistan killing more than thirty people including nine hundred eighty seals but tonight was the news of this taliban death really a p.r. move by the. interest of the. wealthy british soil it's time to. go. to. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy cars report on are.

also a secret that the u.s. and israel are the best of friends hell when netanyahu came to the u.s. back in may and took the podium in front of congress he got more bipartisan standing ovations from the president of the united states himself. and i do see a lot of old friends here and i see a lot of new friends as well. democrats and republicans alike thanks now we all know august is government vacation season so while president obama is on vacation so is congress collectively and guess where a lot of them are going bright sunny israel that's right nearly twenty percent of

congress in fact both republican and democrat will be visiting the middle eastern country for a week during their vacation and while the eighty one congress members are there they'll be visiting with president shimon peres prime minister benjamin netanyahu and will also visit with palestinian authority president mahmoud abbas in the west bank now for some of this is going to be their second or their third trip like stanley hoyer who is hosting a vacation for twenty six democratic members and he really said recently said that he is pleased members of congress have this opportunity to study american interests in the middle east and get a deeper understanding of the issues involved in increasing stability in the region he's probably also referring to all the republican congress members most of them who are freshman this year as this is going to be their first trip to israel let's get to the juicy part of the story right these vacations they're all sponsored as in paid for by the american israel education foundation which is basically a pact now the self-proclaimed america's pro israel lobby is treating u.s.

congress members to an all expense paid vacation the same congress members who vote for their aid package isn't that nice you know i have a feeling of goldman sachs was paying for twenty percent of the u.s. congress to head to aruba for a week it be looked at quite a bit differently or a pro china lobby sent eighty one members of congress to china on vacation that probably wouldn't go over too well either but when it comes to israel anything goes including vacations and they're really really just the tip of the iceberg ca bank has already spent one point four million dollars alone this year and is open secrets dot org explains there they've been up. they're lobbying expenditures over the past couple of years so perhaps that's why congress has dropped billions in aid to israel according to a graph from the congressional research service the us has dropped a total of one hundred and nine billion dollars in aid and if we did a rough average looks like the u.s. is getting between two point five and three billion a year in israel in aid to israel and that number is always rising so just let all

those numbers sink in for a minute while the u.s. economy teeters on the edge and dongas men fight viciously over what cuts to be made to social programs they still manage to find bipartisan consensus to always pump out billions to israel every year that's just a sign of where the priorities of your elected representatives really lie. now this week we've been talking about the deadly helicopter crash in afghanistan that took place last weekend in the wardak province and it took the lives of thirty american service members including one thousand nine hundred seals this was the biggest loss of life in a single incident since the war began and yesterday the remains arrived at the dover air force base in delaware and event which the pentagon decided to close to the press but while blocking any video of that tragic reality of this war there was another effort to get another story in the papers yesterday and i sad statement said that through a precision air strike from an f. sixteen the man who shot down the u.s. helicopter had been killed and the statement also said that they killed not only

the shooter but taliban captain. and several of their taliban associates after they received multiple intelligence leads and tips from local citizens on how to contact that taliban has disputed the claim and said that while taliban members were killed in the airstrike the shooter was not one of them but we do have to raise a few questions here you have to wonder how the hell we know who this one guy is who shot down the plane and specially since the military hasn't yet determined what exactly it is me helicopter he said plane but the military hasn't yet determined what brought this helicopter down the general john allen who is now in command in afghanistan so that he believes it was a single rocket propelled grenade but they don't know with any certainty yet so again how do they expect us to believe with certainty that they know who this one guy was that means we need to take a good hard look at the military's attempts to spin this war to discuss this with me is jim hansen retired special operations master sergeant and military blogger at

black five dot net. jim thanks for being here tonight are you with me here are you with me that it's a little bit hard to believe if they don't even know right they haven't even concluded the investigation to see what exactly brought this helicopter down how how would they possibly know who the one guy is that maybe shot the r.p.g. if that's what it was and what they had in a raid like this if you have a lot of satellite coverage and a lot of drone coverage so what they got in addition to the tips from local villagers and whatnot they watched this group of people leave so they had fairly good idea of exactly where that group of people who conducted the ambush went to and the people who were in contact with the ranger unit to start with so they just assume that since they whack that whole group they got the one guy do they have one hundred percent certainty i doubt it ok so then why that's the well because it. sounds better but you know i feel like it really makes me have to wonder because obviously this was a tragic loss of life you know for this war and the u.s. but it's this concept of revenge that i think that they're trying to spin because

you could look at this at this helicopter crash and you could say this is another sign that this war isn't going well that ten years and it's still not getting any better than they can still take down helicopters but yet they want to make it seem as don't worry because we've got the guys back and now let's keep it going i don't know that it makes a particular statement about whether the war itself is going better because any time you go on a raid like i mean the time you go on a mission to an active firefight it could go back you know that's got nothing to do the taliban right now has trouble gathering enough people to make a good fire fight so i don't think it's a sign that the war itself is going poorly i think this is the same time all they need is one r.p.g. and that could take down a helicopter and it could have some of the most elite they sometimes have the ability to take one incident like that and catch us in a bad way sucks but stuff happens but you don't think this is about the concept of revenge you don't think of this is trying to appease americans trying to pacify that right it's not going to that there's also in tribal honor culture there's the

idea. when you take down the guy who hit you then you make an impact so part of it is information operations against the taliban and to influence the local population and of course there's an element of that to make the american public feel like we've got some revenge and we did it we were there we got the exact guy who pulled the trigger we got all his buddies if we didn't kill him and that's good but then at the end of the day what are we actually getting out of this war again why do these men die well let's hope we didn't i afghanistan and pakistan is bases for the taliban and al qaeda to plan operations against us so there are other places so that's the that's the old after ten years of war after more than a trillion dollars that is spent that have been spent on this specific war thousands of lives that have been lost we can hope that we deny them this area in the future they have while we all go to yemen and somalia and just keep going the world over it's to i mean we've got to go where we find them you know i mean we can only fight them where we know they are we know they're there killing them there stop them from doing things other places you know so if they don't have that as a safe haven where they can recruit train refit and plan operations elsewhere

that's a good thing because it was holding them there isn't stopping anybody from doing things in other places because we now we see other networks rising up and like i mentioned yemen and you have somalia and you have more people that are constantly being recruited because of the fact that we like to bomb a lot of countries i don't know that that's as much of a factor as i mean the separate al qaeda franchise you don't know the that but you can't deny the fact that the more wars we wage the more of these jihad as we create because of our actions i think there is a tie there i don't think it's as direct as people like to state and i don't think i think it is a bad idea that everything you know you just don't want to admit it you just don't want to admit it let's talk about the fact that the pentagon also banned the media from being able to cover this event when the remains came what do you think of that i think it was perfectly fine it was one of the most tragic days you know in a long time for american forces and it certainly sadly didn't stop president obama from having his personal photographer use those dead bodies as

a photo offers reelection campaign. got that was given to us first starters can you imagine what did it yeah but can you imagine what the response would've been like if president obama hadn't gone there is you know i'm going to go right to go he was wrong to let his photographer take your picture of him trying to look solemn in a situation where at least one of the solemn as you know i was on one of these people are dying why release the picture why did the pentagon have to block it to begin with why now only is the white house photographer because. they always are those who were killed asked that no media be there they didn't have the opportunity to tell the president not to use it as a reelection tool that was a grotesque mockery of his office when a doctor you know he's trying to say that president george w. bush never used any moment like that as a reelection to all yes i'm saying exactly that he wanted to be kidding me how many times he told me a picture of bush at dover using dead bodies of our service members of the reelection to we had four actual landing on borrowed time carrier is a list that bush was a fighter pilot obama is not you have to expect the president to go to situations

like this if anything i think the biggest critique that stream made out there and this is one of the making on the show all this week is that a these types of situations unfortunately this only gets attention now every single body that arrives at dover doesn't get the media's attention the president doesn't go to greet it and yes this is been the largest loss of life in a single attack during the entire war right so it's proper but i'm just confused do you feel like people then put more value on the lives of these navy seals because they're the elite forces are they really more valuable then it's. more of a media event that's i think every life is equally valuable i think because the seals get a lot of you know high level attention that it's ok and it was ok for obama to go again it was fine and proper for him to go but the families asked for no attention and for his photographer to take pictures of him and then have them released was a disgraceful attempt to use it when they are human beings in texas there is a technicality because some of these remains have been identified yet and they couldn't actually ask the family members they didn't say we're going to the thirty

said hell no. and of the other ones they probably just didn't bother to dignify the question with an answer they knew better but so do you think about right do you think that if a family member doesn't want the images of the war that taxpayers are paying for that their relatives and their i don't know where in a very right wing it should be respected and the public and the taxpayers and the media be damned what the public and the taxpayers and the media actually need to be able to visualize right they need to realize they need to realize what a war looks like what is going on so far away in the majority of americans aren't even concerned about it aren't even connected to it at all sometimes you need to have that type of the concept but i disconnect her with the entire concept that we need to show caskets at dover in order to prove to america that we're still at war unfortunate i think that sometimes that's the only thing that works john thanks so much for joining us tonight and you're sticking around for happy hour right now. all right still to come tonight we have our thursday edition of show and tell and then it's a subject a lot of people feel uncomfortable talking about polygamy but are polygamy and

democracy incompatible we might dive into that topic or we're going to dive into that topic about. religion you believe science and technology from. the future covered.

welcome back this is all she big headline. looking finances as new and woody's restored in the u.k. and more than a thousand suspects away trial technology behind the riots comes under the spotlight the british prime minister abbas to bond rises from to social networking sites are used to organize elements. israel decides to townsend's more homes undisputed law in the east jerusalem just two weeks before the united nations and votes on recognizing different simmias state the move comes amid mass demonstrations sweeping the jewish state with people venting anger at the high cost of living on an affordable housing. and to kill us know the true contrast is granted permission to sue the government over claims of imprisonment and torture donald rumsfeld the former country secretary of defense could be found guilty of libel.