journalism shows damning evidence that u.s. drone strikes in pakistan target those who go to help after an initial strike and even target civilians at funerals so how much longer will the u.s. government allow the cia to keep their data secret we're going to speak to marcy wheeler about the reactions to this report and you know to some very politically tinge as during the super bowl this year we're going to talk about the insane amounts of money that are pouring in from all sides to fuel political debate in this country. we're going to all that morphy tonight including a dose of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided. well this monday there is no shortage of big news going on around the world americans to be tried in egypt the u.s. closing its embassy in damascus and continuing rhetoric heating up over iran now for once it's been one of those days where the mainstream media has actually chosen to give ample airtime to real news rather than just the typical partisan tit for

tat and i don't mean that the campaign stories were completely absent but just for once they weren't the only thing that the mainstream media shone a light on. the u.s. closes its embassy in syria and is recommending that all u.s. citizens leave the country immediately they are urging all americans not to even consider travel to syria because they say they simply cannot guarantee anybody's security in that country hundreds killed in the streets of syria as the government tries to crush a revolution there this latest deadly bombardment comes on the heels of the weekend strike which killed about two hundred people at the syrian government we're told the state department saying has refused to address its security concerns and one of those major concerns was the possibility of some type of al qaida action in egypt plans to send forty four people including some americans to trial meanwhile egypt's military led government plans to put one thousand americans on trial for

allegedly using foreign funds to create unrest in the country or iranian regime is never going to come to the negotiating table in good faith and they're not going to stop their nuclear weapons program i think the only answer is some kind of regime change. now in light of these stories and the international ramifications of the actions of state and non-state actors in the case of the americans arrested in egypt there's another really big story today the mainstream media unfortunately has chosen to ignore the in talking about international relationships and perceptions and talking about the deaths of innocent civilians what we see the mainstream media doing today picking and choosing when those civilian deaths matter where to lay down their moral judgments you see this weekend a report was released by the bureau of investigative journalism a british organization that we've spoken about before on this show and they've been trying to work with human rights activists journalists civilians in pakistan to get more information on how many civilian deaths u.s. drone strikes of really caused let's not forget the cia's drone program is secret

therefore they don't release any figures or statistics and it wasn't until last week of the president even acknowledged it existed pub. and when he finally did what he was asked a question about it at the google plus hangout there we heard the president say that the u.s. drone campaign in pakistan is a targeted focused effort he also downplayed civilian casualties and told those listening to the drone program has not caused a huge number of them if we can check the figures how are we to know how can we counter his words and so let's get back to this damning report report by the bureau of investigative journalism they have some numbers to offer they found that since obama took office three years ago between two hundred eighty two and five hundred and thirty five civilians have been credibly reported as killed including more than sixty children but it gets even worse than that where you have to question if civilians are killed by accident or on purpose so what they found is the cia's drone campaign in pakistan has killed at least fifty civilians who had gone to help

rescue victims as an after an initial drone strike those that run to help were hit and a follow up attack investigation also found more than twenty civilians have been killed in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners and one example after a high ranking militant had been killed in a strike his funeral was considered bait to get another done fortunately that funeral was attended by almost five thousand people so in order to get one target the cia chose to put the lives of innocent civilians at risk which resulted in many jets how this kind of information should make anybody out there sick to their stomach this kind of information should make every journalist in america call for more accountability for the secrecy of the cia's drone program to stop if it's being done in our name the we need a lot more transparency if we choose to cover government crackdowns in other countries show honest concern for the deaths of civilians we need to also care about the blood that's on our government's hands so while the mainstream media spent the day covering some real news in syria and in egypt we have to ask why they

allow the secrecy of our drone program to continue and refuse to ask questions about it especially when an investigation like this comes out but for some reason when it comes to the damage caused by. our own government's drone program that's what they chose to miss. all right so let's talk more about this report from the bureau of investigative journalism could have finally put more pressure on the obama administration to force the cia to disclose more details or is the media doing a really good job of making sure that this goes by without much fear i mentioned at the top of the show that this report wasn't even touched by the mainstream cable channels now there was a report in the new york times this morning but the spin put out by an anonymous u.s. official in that article may show us just what the administration's strategy is going to be the quote reads as follows one must wonder why an effort that is so carefully gone after terrorists who plot to kill civilians has been subjected to so much

misinformation let's be under no illusions there are a number of elements who would like nothing more than to malign these efforts and help al qaeda succeed so now if you question the drone program that make you a terrorist sympathizer joining me to discuss this is marcy wheeler blogger and. marcy thanks so much for joining us tonight before we get into the new york times and you know what the officials are saying here let's just go back to the reports and this investigation the details that were revealed you know how damning and damaging do you think that something like that is but i think one of the things that's most damning about it is that they actually went and they named the civilians that they say have been killed by american strikes so what do you done it is really increase the quality of information that's out there about these strikes as compared to what the cia gives us which is nothing or obama's quote the other day which was you know sloppy or the cia claiming nobody has died or maybe just a few people have died i mean what they've got is really very specific information

in and one of the things that i found really important about the report was when they went to see whether people were being killed if they went to rescue people they said we start. with fifteen attacks ten we found credible five we've found not to be credible so it's not like they're going in rubber stamping stories of us retaliation against civilians trying to help people been hit by a drone i mean they're going in and checking in trying to find evidence for it and as compared to what we get from the government it's much richer in data now and when you say credible reports that's one of the interesting things here too is that there have been little tidbits out there right in i guess you can say the new york times or any other newspapers by other media organizations before they've never put them all together like this yeah actually one of the things that they quote in the report is job the war of who in his book on the triple agent this was the bombing in khost talk to specific about the the funeral drone targeting that you just

mentioned and he had incredible sources for that book so to then say that you know this funeral targeting practice is made up by by the bureau of investigative journalism is nonsense because nobody is at the same time questioning where it's reported so you know it is credible work has done some of this before we had david wrote it in the new york times who was held captive by the taliban talking about drone strikes but you're right nobody is putting it together in a database with actual dates and numbers and names attached to each attack and i think that's where we really need to get to force the government to give us that same kind of data also in that sense i mean do you think of this is finally something that might turn the tide you know change the tide a little bit that we we hear a bomb of finally acknowledging this publicly which i think you could say was a big move but now if you have more reports if you have more investigations done by the bureau of this to get of journalism or by others can it finally force them to be more transparent and to disclose more details about it. well you know the

administration is sort of kind of saying they're going to release more information about the anwar locky drone strike which was in yemen. so they are beginning to recognize that they're beginning to suffer religion i'm a see issue here i think one of the other things that's going on is david petraeus has actually been less gung ho about targeting then leon panetta ahead of him before him with the cia and so one of the you're beginning to see interesting leaks coming out of the cia as well because david petraeus isn't giving the counterterrorism center kind of carte blanche to go bomb whoever they want to bomb so we're getting leaks anyway and this report i think is an important part of it but i have read the quote that you raised you know were al qaeda sympathizers if we asked pakistani journalists and locals to help put names to the people who've been hit me strikes. you know that they're obviously trying to push back and ensure

there won't be any independent checking of their records in you know possibly in anticipation of them becoming slightly more transparent with it so it's really important to have that independent reporting out there i had to read that just seems ludicrous and i was assuming that you probably agree i hope that you agree that now you have anonymous of course officials because they can't come out on the record because the program is supposed to be secret coming out and making this argument the now if you actually want to get the details of what the government is doing that makes you an al qaeda sympathizer when when when will people stop trying to apply this logic or stop trying to use this logic because much of the same thing you know in the build up to the war with iraq to write that if you by any means question the idea as to whether or not we should go to war there than you were unpatriotic or you might be sympathizing with you know we saw a lot of reports about the possibility of al qaeda being there or with saddam hussein. when the other thing about it is a perfect metaphor for the drone campaign right so you. now this very powerful

government official going anonymously to attack independent journalists and it you know it's very parallel to the kind of dissociation and distance that we bring to the drone strikes and also kind of the. designed ignorance about what happens on the ground i mean so i think they're very parallel and you know leon panetta has also been on the record recently about about drone strikes so it's not like officials are being allowed to go make on the record comment so you really have to wonder why the new york times let that go in as an anonymous do you think that they should or that they should not have but i don't think they you know in remote pointed out today that it doesn't get the new york times policy on anonymous sourcing which goes back of course to their double leading up to iraq war basically says you can't make you cannot quote officials making attacks on people. under the

veil of anonymity you either paraphrase them if it's so important you need to get it in but you don't allow them to actually quote something at the same time as you're giving them anonymity so you know quite a new york times rules they should have done it but it's also i mean it's so if this is all about information assim asymmetry right the government knows what they've been doing with they've got videos of what they've been doing with drones a couple of journalists go in and fact check it and independently research it and all of a sudden you've got the government you know trying to hide behind this villa secrecy again and you know we at the press should not be encouraging that kind of behavior because it just encourages more secrecy. you know i couldn't agree with you more there too and you know as i started the show open here was that for once i actually see the cable media out there doing real news it's not just fluff today and there is a lot of news going on in the world but you know if we're going to be covering syria for wanted to cover libya and bahrain anywhere i think we also have to take into

account what's happening to innocent civilians by our own government. right and i mean to be fair it is really hard to cover this stuff in the pakistani tribal lands and i think that's what the administration is counting on it's you know it's easier it's still very dangerous to being egypt and even more dangerous to be in syria right now but there's almost nobody in the pakistani tribal lands who's been able to cover this a number of pakistani journalists have been killed for doing so and so there are i think really relying on how difficult it is to access these places to ensure that the story doesn't get out our marcell thanks so much for joining us tonight and you know it's a report that definitely i think needs a lot more people to pay attention to but it's good that somebody finally compiled all that thanks. are just so much more to come tonight occupy d.c. was a victim from the curse and swear this weekend so explain how it happened and what the future holds for the encampment also talked about syria gave us announce that

of suspending its embassy operations in the country but alas scott horton what might come next.

move back are the words echoed by d.c. park police on saturday as they finally advanced on the occupy d.c. encampment had been almost a week since word was let out of the occupy branches in d.c. macpherson square and freedom plaza were going to be evicted and early saturday morning cops got the word that february fourth would be the day of starting as early as five am the police came through the camp explaining that the tent of dreams that had been erected over the statue of mickey. square had to be taken down i was there for part of the morning and early afternoon on saturday and saw it began as a pretty peaceful calm environment where police slowly began to overtake one part of the park after another but then they started to remove the tents in an effort to

enforce a new policy of no enclosed tents on the park's premises many of the occupiers fled to one of the quadrants in the park which held their makeshift library and that's when police began being more aggressive. ok right. here you claim that the orders were given to her. for all the right. now the police seem to use this tactic push more a few times on saturday in the corralling of the protesters but the spots of violence one of which involved demonstrators and cops fighting over a barrier fence. thank you i thank you i. thank

you. well i video was filmed by artie's andrew blake and it shows the uniformed aggression by cops towards occupiers and the press oftentimes not differentiating between the two in fact photojournalist jerry nelson was amongst the eleven people who were arrested that day for allegedly disobeying orders and assaulting police officers several ports confirm of the violence quickly subsided and the protesters agreed to leave the camp which has been cleared of their tents and bedding by saturday afternoon by the evening sanitation workers and a few police officers were combing through any of the last belongings there are left to make pearson with forklifts and garbage trucks and anytime with belongings left inside was confiscated and swept up and police and forced the policy for the rest of the day with a truck carrying an infrared scanner to ensure that nobody sleeps there duffy remember the occupy encampment drew the attention of congress when republican darrell issa called on the members of the house oversight and government reform committee to tackle the very pressing issue of the parks becoming unsanitary and

infested with rodents it was a rare move considering congress isn't usually get involved in local issues and many saw this call for eviction is one that was politically motivated by congressional conservatives outsiders addiction was the first time the people were actually removed from the park which has been considered one of the longest standing occupy camps as one stood for one hundred twenty nine days and even though park police came through and moved many people's personal belongings some occupiers are already back on sunday other state of the freedom plaza encampment regardless demonstrators a vow to return saying that you can't evict an idea who is i who has time has come meanwhile the freedom plaza camp which is subject to the same no tent rules has been left untouched this weekend and as of right now we're not sure if they're going to face park police in the near future or if they'll be allowed to continue their protests. just. laws are now focused on syria or an eleven month old uprising and continual government crackdowns are keep going on today the united states

closed its embassy in damascus and with through all staff members as follows not only the shelling of the city of homs on friday and saturday but also a failed un security council vote to condemn assad's government which both china and russia vetoed now since then the rhetoric has picked up even u.s. ambassador susan rice twitter following disgusted that russia and china prevented the un security council from fulfilling its sole purpose so is this putting into question the importance of the u.n. or the showing of changing global influence and what should we expect the u.s. and other countries to do next joining me to discuss it is scott horton contributing editor on legal and national security matters for harper's magazine scott thanks so much for joining us tonight and it's been a while since united spoken about this what do you really think is is happening in syria right now right i mean it seems like the violence is perhaps picking up at the same time you also have those that are in opposition to assad who always wanted to peacefully protest saying that they now feel like they have no choice but to arm

themselves and a lot of warnings that this will be a bloody civil war well i think there's no question but that right now the situation becoming far more blogger month than it's been up to this day do that also coming to be more and more a kid into a civil war and more and more like what we've worn in libya particularly in the earlier days and there are a number of reports. about. about soldiers and even officers leaving it's clear the number of them are being harbored to shelter outside of the syrian territory and that they're coordinating an opposition so you know with it's a country on the road to civil war right now all right so let's talk about this new u.n. security council resolution which was vetoed by. ana and by russia this was not about military intervention not about a no fly zone it really was just a call to condemn assad's regime but how much do you think that what ended up

happening with the u.n. security council resolution over libya which did then obviously we saw a lot of mission creep there and ultimately led to the offing fall to think that something like that might have influenced their decision one hundred percent i mean i think that the vote that occurred this weekend the rejection of the resolution the condemnation. was already foreseeable from the close of the libyan operations i think it was very very clear in fact i said this in the piece i wrote in foreign policy that the next time this came up was likely to be in the context of syria and it was very clear that russia and china and perhaps a few other nations would vote no and the reason is not that this resolution was going straight to responsibility to protect the military measures but it was setting the stage for exactly that because a if we go back and look at what happened to libya there was the same sort of condemnation that was about to repeatedly and set

a situation where the security council to enforce its position had to move to military steps are i think russia and china also a few other members are very concerned about what happened with libya because they voted the resolution to authorize the use of military force but also set very clear limits on that force it did not authorize a regime change toppling the government of moammar gadhafi and get the u.s. the u.k. and france to use the resolution as a cover for regime change in fact a number of people on national security council when pressed on this say openly that the president obama concluded that this was this was really the only meaningful way that the people of libya could be protected well that may be an honest assessment but that's not something that was authorized by the security council so i think to preserve their positions china and russia said no. what

do you think of this you know like i said the rhetoric has definitely been hating from the u.s. side to anything about that tweet that i read from susan rice she said that she's disgusted by the v.l. and that that doesn't allow the u.n. to fulfill its sole purpose and we've seen something like that before or is this i guess just a development in our new digital age know well the tweets are are new but i think that sort of language is is certainly not new or not unique i mean i have sympathy for this view i mean i think most people who watch what's going on in syria are appalled by it and would like to see the security council raise its voice and interject its authority on the side of the protesters to protect them but i think in this case you know the example of libya is standing in the way so i think this is this is the negative fallout from the libya experience we're seeing right now and so what do you think really my happen next here because we've already seen a u.s. senator john kerry for example say if you're thinking of the other options of other

ways to help the syrian people you know is it going to end up like the situations we've seen many times before where the u.n. is essentially taken out of the picture and countries go around in a might be to excuse me to supply weapons to one side or the other or even to you know to be a little more aggressive in terms of an intervention well it will be read the tea leaves from the last seventy two hours and you look at the statements that come out of london washington and paris in particular we see those nato allies circling back to something like the beginning of the libya situation where they're talking repeatedly about the need for assad to leave they say it's a regime change situation they appear to be locking themselves into that position and that i think if if they stick to it is going to mean the sort of covert their intelligence operation aimed at undermining the assad regime. ultimately taking it

down a probably an operation that's prepared to allow this to take six months a year two years is necessary of sustained activity and i think in the periphery of syria there are a number of states that seem to share this analysis surprisingly turkey which at the beginning of the conflict at a very friendly attitude towards syria has turned around i think this public opinion in turkey was turned by the attacks on the civilians and it's clear that turkey now is being used as a staging grounds by people who are determined to oppose the government of assad violence. so what do you think of all that says about the u.n. and the role that the u.n. is playing right i mean we saw a lot of people even with iraq when the u.s. decided to go around the u.n. say that this is completely undermining what the u.n. is it. really has no credibility anymore and yet you could say that we also see some shifting global dynamics here south pointing to the fact that in the past if

you vote alongside with you know what the u.s. might want then you might get some good aid packages out of it but that neither china nor russia as a certainly need that anymore and they're willing to you know to assert that and the influence that they have what i'd say two things here i mean one is that this idea of responsibility to protect that the u.n. would step in to protect civilians even while not i'm willing itself in the ultimate political resolution of accomplished i think that was a very very important idea that's been badly wounded by by the libyan example and so i think that promising role has been question really but secondly are i wouldn't count the u.n. out all the way because i think if if the situation in syria continues to on the rabble we see the assad government losing its grip on the country at some point you are going to see the security council come together and all there are some sort of

measures but i don't think we're going to see anything like the libyan intervention again it's going to be more in the nature i think of humanitarian relief measures and maybe peacekeeping at some point maybe supervised elections those sorts of measures and if you see many trying to pass they may happen but the situation i'd say the authority to use our government has got to a ruby eroded considerably further before there are things and i think that you know as you mention two of the living example recent reports of what's going on there of torture going on in prisons and of what's going on in egypt to you know definitely make the prospects of if assad were to leave will it only be incredibly messy and violent afterwards seem more likely scott thanks so much for joining us tonight great to be with you. hi coming up next we're going to bring you all the latest on p.f.c. bradley manning as you notice any belief we motivated ads during last night's super bowl when we come back we're going to determine if the money is corrupting politics and if so.

ten thirty pm in moscow the zero r.t. headlines. it is clear that efforts to end violence must be accompanied by a dialogue between political forces syria's president confirm that he is ready for such work breaking news this hour syria's opposition signals it welcomes russia's mediating efforts in trying to bring them and they go over to the negotiating table this after president assad assured russia's foreign minister of his readiness to talk to all political sides and promise serious new constitution will soon be put to a vote. as russia stepping up diplomatic efforts to solve the crisis in syria major european and gulf states recall their ambassadors from damascus. greek standoff

clashes on the streets of athens as protesters voice anger at massive new job cuts while coalition members struggled to agree to more austerity measures to secure a vital second bailout. and it is coverage that could reveal previously unknown life forms russian scientists drilled deep into a subglacial lake in the coldest place on earth we explore the significance of the rare finding with our own correspondent who reported from antarctica. more news coming your way about thirty minutes but first part two of below the show stay with us.