welcome to the lone show at the real headlines with none of the mersey are going to live in washington d.c. now tonight we're going to take a look at a scathing op ed written by a goldman sachs executive on his way out and then as we've been highlighting every day it's sunshine week so politicos josh gerstein is going to join us to break down the obama administration's distal record on transparency and the internet has proven to be a tool that can be used for good and for evil so we're going to speak to an author that looks at the power dynamics between governments corporations and the public to

figure out how we can keep the internet free so we have all that work tonight including a dose of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided to me it's. no surprise here the day after more primaries and the mainstream media is just but sad itself but how much there is to discuss about the results. rick santorum it's a double win in the deep south he wins the alabama and mississippi primaries a true for tuesday sweep deep in the american south a rick santorum celebrating twin victories of the super you know the bama so why did santorum come out and talk he over perform he did really well with conservative voters and there are a lot of them and in mississippi alabama white evangelical voters very christian voters flocking to him instead of newt gingrich he just might not think of the deep south as rick santorum country that maybe should and mitt romney came in third in

both states it's clear you come to the earth and you're the problem in both of those southern states you can't win the south you cannot win the nomination they have been third in the south but he had a commanding performance in the hawaiian caucuses the former governor getting forty five percent of the vote in hawaii and i guess even those cheesy grits came off a little cheesiness out they didn't buy it santorum got those states of the south you do not gain much ground in the race for delegates santorum picked up thirty five last night romney forty one now the candidates are looking at to the three contests over the next six days in missouri puerto rico and illinois. arctics said it many times and i'll say it again yes presidential elections are obviously incredibly important they deserve media coverage but not to the extent that we see the mainstream media obsess over it all day long drowning out all other news stories that are out there so they only highlight yet another great report by jeremy scahill that as usual the mainstream media is ignoring you know there aren't

a whole lot of journalists these days that actually travel not only to war zones but to shadow war zones the places in which our government operations that they really don't want anyone knowing about and scale is one of the few reporters actually willing to go there risked his life to bring the story but its latest piece highlights another such journalist yemeni journalist who risks like a limb to report on civilian casualties of air strikes it was the last interview on our locky so far as it's known before was announced that a lot he was on an assassination list and this journalist named as a hater shape he's currently in prison in yemen and he was sentenced to five years in yemeni court on terrorism related charges when there was enough outcry from locals from human rights groups president saleh drawn out a pardon for this journalist but here's the kicker scahill told artie's lucy caffein off earlier today he remains in prison today thanks to president obama and a phone call that he made to solly in february of two thousand and eleven president obama said we're very concerned about the release of despair we don't know the full

extent of what happened that phone call at the white house and state department. for what it meant that obama said the u.s. . was rescinded and he continues to walk away in a prison after having been convicted in a kangaroo court and it's he's in prison because barack obama wants to close. so i'm going to give you a really basic breakdown of the story i suggest everybody go and read the original piece as reported by scahill what's most important for us to note here is that all the talk we hear from the us government about freedom of the press freedom of information we've seen countless times now that if a specific situation might embarrass the government highlights something that they want to keep a secret that they've been actively denying all of that freedom is goes straight out the window and he seems to be the case with shades actually he reported on an air strike in yemen in december of two thousand and nine an airstrike it took the lives of thirty four women and children and which the yemeni air force took responsibility for and for which the pentagon congratulated that because the original reports it only said it was militants who were killed now thanks to shea

who went to the location of the strike found missile parts labeled made in the usa parts of tomahawk missiles cluster bombs which yemeni forces do not have we know that was the u.s. that was responsible for the strike we also know thanks to cables released by wiki leaks of there have been conversations between sali and general petraeus about actively lying to the public so ali saying we'll continue saying the bombs are ours not yours and so this journalist reporting the truth that neither government wanted revealed for daring to use to his connections to go to interview people like anwar locky he was convicted on terrorism related charges and then you wonder why no one else tries to go do those interviews but what's perhaps that most shameful scahill noted is that she is reporting has been used by so many of our media sources as so many of the other organizations out there from the new york times the washington post a.b.c. news and you know when it's our own or president that wants to keep that journalist whose work they've been using locked up those outlets fall silent now for now i

haven't seen anybody in the mainstream media talking about skills report and the past with his report on cia proxy prisons in somalia or on how our counterterrorism efforts are having the opposite effect and only making things worse in yemen eventually the mainstream networks caught on but nobody jumps on covering these stories right away you don't see anyone calling for she is released with the same passion as one american journalists arrested overseas and yet here our government is playing a direct role in why this man is in jail the mainstream media for now is choosing to miss. well there is one disgruntled employee that's got everybody talking today i guess you could say that this is how you cook it with flair greg smith is a london based executive director of goldman sachs who oversees equity derivatives but today he announced it was the last day with the company and a scathing op ed in the new york times after almost twelve years of the firm smith

writes i can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as i have ever seen it now smith points to the loss of a culture of integrity doing right by clients and instead describes for the current goals become making as much money as possible off of your clients clients that he says that managing directors refer to as muppets and i know the stories making a splash when goldman sachs was trending on twitter by six o'clock this morning goldman aspired back trying to downplay smith's position in the company saying that it's unfortunate that his singular opinion is amplified in a newspaper and speaks louder than other feedback but at the end of the day well greg smith has the world talking today will he be remembered tomorrow joining me from our studio in new york is william cohen former investment banker and author of the recently released paperback edition money and power how goldman sachs came to rule the world and he's also contributing editor to vanity fair and a columnist for bloomberg view bill thanks so much for joining us tonight first i just want to get your opinion what do you think about this going out with the banqueting in this style. i mean who doesn't fantasize about being able to tell

your employer what you think about them on the op ed page of the new york times that's most often just a fantasy for people one that they can only dream about and now greg smith has gone and done it. i suspect today you know this afternoon he may be having second thoughts about this because you know i suspect he will never work in this town again metaphorically speaking of course i don't think you could ever possibly work on wall street ever again he may not want to work on wall street ever again i assume he doesn't because it ain't going to happen well let's talk about some of the things that he's accusing goldman sachs which are pretty damning rating saying the toxic bear is a stock or that excuse me the environment is toxic and destructive is just about making money for the firm to clients not bad it's none of it is good but is it really shocking. look i mean honestly all of

what he writes about in moore i've written about in my book i mean anybody who's followed goldman sachs carefully which i believe probably isn't a whole lot of people knows that goldman sachs has always been acting in its self interest for most of its hundred forty three years by the way that's what most corporations do in america that's what capitalism is frankly pretty much all about acting in your own self interest and nowhere is that more obvious than on wall street so there are numerous instances in goldman sachs' history where it acted in its own self interest put its own interest instead of its clients even one could look at the goldman sachs trading corporation in one thousand nine hundred ninety nine hundred thirty one could look at how goldman behaved leading up to the bankruptcy of the penn central. railroad corporation which was the largest bankruptcy of its time in nine hundred seventy goldman sachs put its interests in front of its clients what was senator levin talking about in april two thousand and ten for eleven hours in front of the permanent investigation committee or an investigation of this talking about goldman putting its own client interests in

front of its clients so i'm not sure what rock greg smith crawled out from under today to write this but this has been going on a long time of goldman sachs well so in absentia that interview question his motives that all right i've seen some people asking if he could have done this before he worked at a company or an investment firm like goldman sachs and probably made a whole lot of money doing it for the last twelve years you know as a kind of a cop out to leave now. look we don't one thing we don't know about greg smith is the circumstances under which he left or why he left this is obviously extremely rare i can't think of another instance in goldman sachs history where this is happened. you know usually they get people who leave the firm to sign non disparagement agreements or to sign confidentiality agreements usually that's how they get people to stay in the fold stay under the tent obviously that did not

happen this time we don't know why we don't know what greg smith was thinking this is not a good day for goldman sachs because frankly they thought this kind of sturm and drang about their behavior was very much two thousand and ten two thousand and eleven news they were hoping to get this behind them and so this dredge that up again but this has been going on of course the search for a long long time and it didn't change unfortunately after the financial crisis ok and so then i think we have to get to some of the points that he makes because it seems like greg smith is still optimistic that goldman sachs can change if it wants to any thinks that clients are eventually going to wise up brady says that have clients don't trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you but i think you have to question how true that is and there is an interesting thing that made the empty theatre day about balance by the way. the one thing i would take issue with in this fascinating amazing story op-ed is the idea that they will lose clients because at this point they haven't even though most of the clients i spoke

to are fully aware of how goldman plays them and they still do business with them because they feel they have to. think that's true all right we have bankers you big to fail and firms like goldman sachs they're just too big to try to invest with anyone else. i think the speaker in the c. and d. c. clip is absolutely right. i think it's sort of before on your air as a cartel goldman sachs is king of the cartel after the financial crisis we've lost pierce stearns we've lost lehman brothers merrill lynch is not what it once was morgan stanley is not what it's once was goldman sachs doesn't really have any competition and if you're a client who you know still wants the same kind of service from a goldman sachs that it once got you know there's really no place you can go to get it except goldman sachs i talk to any number of clients in the writing in my book who understand fully the kind of treatment that they're going to get from goldman sachs the understand fully that goldman sachs is going to compete with them they're going to goldman sachs is going to probably trade on their inside information they

understand this but there's no choice there's nobody willing to do with goldman sachs does which ultimately frankly isn't potentially good for goldman sachs but it's very bad for the rest of us it's very bad for our capital market system it's very bad for capitalism and you know i've been writing about this for years and how they should change and nobody is listen to me now maybe this will get people goldman sachs to wake up but frankly in lloyd blankfein as one page letter response today i didn't get the sense that there's any contrition anything that they're willing to change in what they've done and so i don't see much changing and i don't see the clients being in a position to force them to change no now from that response by definitely didn't seem like he was sorry at all or felt bad if anything they just tried to maybe not smear a greg smith but demote him to some low level employee that really didn't matter but you know i mean everything that you're saying it sounds so frustrating and so we know that we're being do you but we have no other choice but so in that sense

you know is it going to take everybody to be willing to loosen money as they can and actually try to take their money out of these investment firms like robin sax is it going to take people like yourself people like greg smith to come out and speak out because it doesn't seem like government regulation is doing the trick that's not changing anything. you know government regulators unfortunately are bought and sold you know bought and paid for by goldman sachs and other wall street firms i mean one thing that would have a huge effect of course is if institutional investors said i've had enough of this i'm not going to invest in these companies anymore and stop doing business with these companies that would send the most powerful message of all but again you've got to understand that the kinds of trading that goldman can do for its clients the kind of risk that it's willing to take on behalf of its clients there's really nobody else willing to do that and so until other competitors come along to give goldman sachs and run from this money is going to be able to get a lot of get away with this for the foreseeable future if lloyd blankfein were smart though he'd you know take the bull by the horns and say to people this isn't

we're not going to do this anymore this isn't right this is what we're all about and we're going to change our behavior starting now but i don't hear him saying that there's nothing in his letter that said that and you know i think they're just going to try to continue to muddle through this is best they can our last thing which is another point i heard some bring up today is that you know at least you see somebody quitting and in a public manner and you were going to see that in two thousand and nine because everybody was happy to have a job that so some weird way is this a good economic indicator. well i don't think greg smith thinks he's going to get a job well street after this frankly he obviously has got something else in mind i have no idea what it is but he's not going to work on wall street again after this this is the last thing that a wall street employer or a client wants to see happen so i don't think it's a leading indicator of anything a better indicator of our economic position at the moment is you know the slight take downs in the unemployment rate this no ok. i think.

it's time for a quick break with return might remember jose pimentel from the mainstream media's coverage of his arrest by the n.y.p.d. for allegedly planning a terror plot now you may not know as the f.b.i. actually passed on this case we're going to tell you why and the obama administration's pleasure to be the most transparent ever for gas politicos. going forth. in the. same. people calling like you said for free and fair elections. and we're still reporting from the it's about as you can hear behind me loud explosions.

in the. t.v. . you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lankford sleep you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else in here see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture .

last november we first told you about twenty seven year old jose pimentel a dominican native who was arrested by the n.y.p.d. on charges of criminal possession of a weapon in the first degree and the mainstream media who loves a good terrorism clock on wrong story jumped all over it as soon as it hit the news room the man accused of making pipe bombs in his new york city apartment is in custody this morning on several terrorism related charges authorities in new york believe based off an alleged terrorist before perhaps hours before he could execute his plans twenty seven year old jose pimentel allegedly wanted to bomb the police

and u.s. troops returning from the war we want to show you a video of the resulting damage would see him and kill her ability to build and place the bomb and this tape of that n.y.p.d. test with jeremy he could of course he represents exactly the kind of threat or fear i direct to robert muller and his experts have warned about new york's top cop says the suspect was radicalized by the teachings of u.s. born cleric and war a lucky. so the conditions are perfect he was said to have ties to al a lot he had planned building a bomb and converted to islam on the surface it looks like a cut and dry terrorism incident stop before anything could happen and of course mayor michael bloomberg and y.p. chief ray kelly held a press conference praising juan fauresmith for stopping this attack before was carried out. he really is the kind of threat. the robber moeller and his experts have warned about. now it's funny that bloomberg out of the f.b.i.

is robert mueller interest speech because the f.b.i. wasn't actually involved in this case at all in fact the f.b.i. was aware the n.y.p.d. had been tracking him and tell for two years but the feds never felt that he was a serious threat and he was mentally unstable and they declined opportunities to take the man down so that's why the fan was with the president was arrested by the n.y.p.d. process in a state court where he's usually terrorism cases are handled on a federal level with the f. b.-i him prosecuted in the federal court system but the f.b.i. wanted nothing to do with this case so yesterday it was back in new york state court so he could enter a not guilty plea now defense lawyers think they have enough information to prove that one example of police overreaching they said we think we're going to jury here is both sides of this case they'll see it for what it really is that's not the only thing that might work against prosecutors according to the new york times the suspect got some help and his help came in the form of mental neighbor who also just how open to be a confidential informant for the n.y.p.d.

and the informant was not only a confidant but he also provided a place for the suspect to work on his bombs possibly provided the materials and the know how to actually create the weapon and the times went on to say that the informant also recorded incriminating statements made by payment tell after the to them smoked marijuana together now there's mounting evidence of this informant stepped in and influenced him and tell and maybe why the n.y.p.d. settled on a state case rather than the federal terrorism charges listen to this line from the times article state prosecutors said they were allowed to charge mr p. with a conspiracy even if he were acting with just the informant federal law does not permit charging such a conspiracy and maybe that's a lot of the feds have backed off and it looks like for very good reasons so we can make sure to keep you posted on how the court rules. are and so as our viewers know it's sunshine week national initiative aimed at

advancing open government transparency the freedom of information and so far every day this week we've been highlighting an issue for you that's shrouded in government secrecy and the case of bradley manning to the new cybersecurity legislation that's being pushed on capitol hill which threatens to exempt even more material from the freedom of information act and unfortunately it doesn't stop there the obama administration which let's not forget promised to be the most open and transparent it's going as far as keeping the line list on tonight's state dinner with british prime minister david. a secret so who can forget the outrage a few years back after it turned out that officials gathered to discuss the economic crisis were enjoying three hundred dollars bottles of wine but where else is ministration failing on the transparency front and who is best equipped to fight it joining me to discuss is josh gerstein reporter for politico josh i want to thank you so much for joining us and i add you know you write a lot about this and there's a lot of extensive documentation out there that shows that the obama administration is doing really bad specifically when it comes to for your requests right whether

it be trying to challenge that in court having excessive fees put on there but overall if you look at the way the government this administration has approached the issue of transparency what do you think is the scariest part the worst part was dangerous of their moves well i think the most questionable moves are probably issues you may have talked about relating to some of the whistleblower and leak cases there have been i think six filed already against people in the government who are accused of leaking classified information to the media in the entire prior history of the united states there's been something like two or three cases of that sort that have been filed and these are pretty serious cases if you're in the government you're accused of leaking secret top secret type information you could be looking at. you know ten twenty years in prison or more bradley manning would be one example of one of these six cases. and so in that case i think we have to bring up kind of a weird interesting little episode that we saw this week which is where he says he

had a press report where basically it said that the white house specifically told reporters not to quote anybody by name and then they quoted u.s. trade representative ron kirk and deputy national security advisor for international economic affairs michael froman and the very next line they said that they won't talk about the internal dealings or decisions editorially that are made of a.p. but. i mean what do you think about was that supposed to be with an accident do you think or was that supposed to be a bit of a jab oh i think it was definitely a jab it was no accident the a.p. has been pretty strong on the sunshine issues i think they file more freedom of information requests than just about anybody else in the media they're very aggressive on these issues so i think it was a pretty strong jab at the white house coming here in the sunshine week but those kinds of background briefings i mean we shouldn't mislead viewers into thinking that they're not common they're very common it's very routine i cover the white house all the time and they have briefings all the time where you're only allowed

to refer to someone as a senior administration official quote them like that there are other variations on that such as no quotes allowed where you can get sort of background information and you can report officials think there's officials plan to do this but you can't quote anybody at all and sometimes these things are basically completely off the record and it's not clear what you're supposed to do with the information so definitely a case of the associated press was trying to strike a blow for press freedom during the sunshine week but so in that sense you know it becomes a weird dynamic too because you want to talk about trying to force the government to be more open to be more transparent and we talked about this relationship that the administration the government in general now has with the press where the press is so dependent on the government for certain leaks and for access to information you know does the plus does the press also play a role in helping to contribute to this ongoing secrecy. well there's no question about that i mean it's already been pointed out at the washington post pointed out that the associated press despite taking the stand just the night before moved

a story about the subject matter of that briefing that was attributed apparently to senior administration officials are some sort of a tip from the administration now there's nothing wrong with getting tips but the reality is that sometimes what happens is there are briefings separate briefings for wire service reporters each day where they kind of preview for them what's coming up the next day the administration likes to have the associated press move a story to sort of set the agenda for the day and to try to get some of the facts out so it's definitely a two way street and reporters are always looking for information on whatever kind of basis they can get it where we really are the problem is that reporters grow band together and insist that these types of briefings should be done on the record we should be able to quote people and as long as some reporters are willing to take the information on background with that means without it being quoted or attributed it's very hard for the rest of the media to take a hard line against it especially in this internet era when one report from one

person is going to pop up everywhere if they have something that others don't what do you think about the role that congress plays navas i know they have been holding hearings this week about froyo you know what was your takeaway. well you know congress i have to say i think mostly there are many people in congress that approach this as a political issue i don't know how sincerely interested they are in the subject sometimes there are some folks that have pursued these issues for a long time senator leahy on the democratic side i think senator cornyn and senator grassley on the republican side have do have a genuine interest in the freedom of information act but as a general rule congress only seems to care about enforcing this when it's sort of the other administration in power by which i mean republican members are always interested in transparency and talk about the freedom of information act when it's a democratic president in power and democratic members seem more interested in a subject when it's a republican president in power and one of the things i've written about is how they're sort of a lack of outrage with the obama administration when they do things that are an

affront to transparency just because you know the president has sort of own that transparency brand and it was bush who was seen as a threat to reporting on reporters not president obama and so people are often somewhat surprised to hear there been all these prosecutions of reporters sources and now we've got an effort going forward to try to force the new york times reporter to testify in court about its confidential sources so in that sense we've spoken about the administration that's doing a piss poor job actually living up to their promise of being of us transparent ministration after the press. also doesn't do that good of a job because i guess they have to they feel they have to play the game or at least some reporters new congress does it for political purposes what can the average citizen do in that sense. well i think it's just important to monitor the degree to which the government is keeping up with its promises here i don't want to say that the obama administration hasn't done anything while there are some people who think in the foyer area of freedom of information act things are worse maybe even

a little bit than they were under president bush they've done pretty good job trying to push out data and so forth and make the government's use of the internet more robust i think for the average citizen it's just a question look at these open government plans every agency has put one out about the kind of information they're planning to put online they've promised to put online it's not that hard to go through it item by item and see whether they've actually done it you know they say they're going to put out the schedules first pacific cabinet member on a monthly basis have they done so when you look at it no not really maybe about twenty five thirty percent of the time and about seventy five percent of the time they happen so that's really the kind of checking that people can do and i guess blog about it or write about it and bring it to the attention of the folks that follow them on social media and so forth i haven't gotten their fair share but any time we don't even know what kind of wine they're going to be drinking tonight you know if you want to talk about the obsessive nature of some of the secrecy josh thanks so much for joining us tonight.