market why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with much stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars report. tonight on r t the national security agency sure has someone's best interests in mind when it spies on american citizens but it's probably not yours or mine i'll tell you about some of the more shady practices of this government agency. and secret surveillance isn't the only reason you should watch what you say these days political correctness is also being taken to new extremes in a country where a simple tongue slip could cost you your career is it time for americans to just grow some figure skin. in the year two thousand two bills was accused of assaulting an ex girlfriend but there were no charges filed because bill's on the one anger management counseling the tragedy that put the entire war on trial and not the

curse of seventeen afghan civilians was more than wonder range the soldier that's now this case has the potential to blow palsy u.s. intervention all together and we'll show you why. and good evening it's friday march twenty third eight pm in washington d.c. i'm christine friends out there watching our team. well it's the end of the weekend this has been a really interesting week in terms of new information coming out about the extent to which your government might be spying on you we told you a few days ago about a report by wired magazine that outlined the details of the spy center being built in a small town last aliu tom it's called simply the utah data center and its purpose is to intercept analyze and store quite a bit of the world's communications from international foreign and domestic

networks and this week there was also a rare occurrence the n.s.a. chief actually testified in front of congress and took questions about the n.s.a. ability both legally and physically to spy on u.s. citizens while dancing around some of the facts general keith alexander for the most part denies that this happens but there is evidence that shows otherwise and many people who believe otherwise one of those people is a means to part of it a legal counsel of the electronic privacy information center and earlier i asked her opinion is the n.s.a. spying on u.s. citizens here's your take i do believe that the n.s.a. is being very secretive about what it's doing i believe that spine is probably involved and i don't think that most the information that we've ever received about the n.s.a. has come from whistleblowers in the whistle blows at this point are saying that they're spying on domestic citizens they're spying in the united states and i think that information has to be weighed appropriately back in back in the day a couple decades ago some of the things that they do and you see this in t.v.

shows and old movies they tap the phones that the landline so they could listen in find out where the person was or what they were saying and they'd also sometimes be able to get warrants to actually go through the people's mayor well fast forward to two thousand and twelve nobody i know has a landline of my parents we have cell phones now we have and we have the ability to buy disposable cell phones we communicate over e-mail how has the n.s.a. to your knowledge been dealing with sort of this change these advancements in technology in terms of being able to do their job. well the n.s.a. and she says has just created this new data center they're building this new data center in utah it's supposed to have unprecedented data capabilities so able to take all of the electronic transmissions that are coming out of your mobile phone or your computer my mobile phone out of anybody's mobile phone. they have the capability you know the n.s.a. saying that they're not doing it for united states citizens unless we're communicating overseas or a foreign entity is but the have the ability to collect all of those communications

now this data this center in utah isn't just a data center they're not just collecting information it's also a cryptography cryptography center so they're actually looking at d.n. cribbing all of the data that comes out so for example when you use g. mail you're all your e-mails are encrypted by default google has given you the service and has allowed you to say my communications are protected now the n.s.a. center is designed around building systems that will d.m. crap that data and remove any protection that you can put onto it so it's not only gathering the information it's doing its best to be able to look at any information that you put protections on i mean that just seems kind of crazy to me obviously when you talk about security there's often you know it often goes hand in hand with secrecy but we live in the united states of america there's a constitution and this kind of stuff i mean if you're talking about is not supposed to be happening other than these you know we as you said these whistleblowers have come forth and said in fact it is happening why how do they

justify this well the i don't know what the n.s.a. has justified it other than just knives and this is their modus operandi for five years and that's it has been litigated gives the n.s.a. trying to get information we've been trying to get their cyber security off already that was given to them by george w. bush they have said no they said we're not going to give you any room for any information we tried to get when lieutenant general alexander was actually first brought to the n.s.a. he testified in front of congress many of his answers were kept hidden in classified we have asked for those answers to be made public. the united states this involves if he thinks that the methods of domestic surveillance should be talking place and what those methods should be so that his answers on these very sensitive subjects are going to cut it in and the n.s.a. has operated continually under the strout of non-transparency and secrecy the spy a commitment on president obama's first day in office that this is going to be the most transparent administration ever the n.s.a. just doesn't think that applies to them right right well i think

a lot of branches of government as you know the president obama has also used the espionage act to charge several people more people than any other all the other presidents combined so that transparency thing hasn't exactly happened you talk about. the head of the n.s.a. speaking and testifying in front of congress this most recent testimony happened this week i think it was on tuesday i want to play one question that came out about here and it was very interesting. dick cheney were elected president and wanted to detainee incessantly waterboard every american who sent an e-mail making fun of these well known hunting mishaps. what i'd like to know is does the n.s.a. have the technological capacity to identify those cheney she was based upon the content of their e-mails yes or no no.

so as you say denial in general alexander goes on to explain that assuming those emails were sent within the united states that the n.s.a. does not have the ability to do that i don't know whether he's saying the legal ability or the physical or ability to capability that in the u.s. you know the n.s.a. he says would have to go through the f.b.i. . you know get a warrant and basically was just watching responsibility talk a little bit about you know i guess read between the lines for us here well i can't help but watch that clip and reminisce about it's an area not too long ago when george w. bush set up and said they were not collecting they were not wiretapping phones of american citizens and it wasn't too long after that that the n.s.a.'s weren't wiretapping program was revealed by a whistleblower and so you wonder and what the n.s.a. is just frequent tracked track record of hiding information either if lieutenant i was interest choosing his words very carefully which some have proposed that maybe

they can't collect it within the united states state but they're using satellites to collect this information and that's the collection point and then it being transmitted into the united states for process or if he's just lying out rights which has happened in the past as well what we've talked to people here who say that that there's also sort of the element of language that can be used that that intercepts that spy to us might need something different than the actual language. given an outline of at the national security administration. let me talk about that and also that happened this week i mean certainly the fisa law a lot of stuff going on i was just yesterday u.s. attorney general eric holder just basically gave the national terrorism counterterrorism center the license to retain americans data for up to five years and he's not just people who you know that they've got warrants to to look into because they thought they were suspected of terrorism these are people who have no ties have no suspects of being suspected of being tied to terrorism they can hold on to that information for five years what was the purpose of giving that license.

well that license is actually supposed to make americans feel more secure and supposed to gather all this information and they think by having a bunch of information being able to retain it and reference it that it's making the country safer however you find that when you have information in one place stored for a very long period of time it actually makes that information less secure because it gives criminals and people who want to use that bad that methods a place to go so it's actually making people less secure when it's trying to make people safer which i think we all would agree is not a good interesting i mean support as a legal counsel of the electronic privacy information center appreciate your insight on this there's a kind of a tangled web of things to go through here when it comes to safety and security in the u.s. . another major story this week the latest on the massacre in afghanistan that sergeant rod robert bales has now officially been charged with seventeen counts of premeditated murder in a shooting rampage in southern afghanistan bales was also charged with six counts

of attempted murder and six counts of assault and if you've been watching the news coverage you'd know that the story here in the u.s. at least has widely been about sergeant bales himself this is the robert bales most people who knew him described a man always smiling despite that smile he'd been through a lot sergeant robert bales the u.s. army soldier accused of killing sixteen afghan civilians he was once accused of ripping off an ohio couple to the tune of over a million dollars in the year two thousand and two bills was accused of assault to your ex girlfriend but there were no charges filed because bills underwent anger management counseling feels that his wife held onto a condo that usually when they were treating it as a rule of property we drove over to their neighborhood earlier today that place is under foreclosure. so what about the other parts of the story the fact that this is not a simple story of a single soldier who had had enough this is also a story of the actual impact of war about the horror of war and more importantly

the casualties created on both sides of the battlefield so we thought we'd broaden the story a little bit and talk about some of those other aspects that haven't been discussed for that and more i was joined by journalist and writer neal say and i asked him about the need the media the narrow focus on the war here's his take. i think it's a lot easier to focus the person it's easier to look at this particular guy's surjit fails. that he was either a rogue soldier or east. as one of the only people to seriously things wars their record. but you were right earlier when you said that this is not necessarily simply. because sergeant bales probably acted on it but there are a lot of things. that we're going to the united states and nato because. this is a good opportunity for us to think about what we asked them to do and the price that it may actually cost the war i think you're right i think there's

a lot of different kind of directions we could take this and certainly one direction is the fact that a lot of times these soldiers and men and women come back from for more number one two or three in the case of robert bales or this is his fourth deployment they come back and they're they're not given the time they need they're not given the diagnosis that's correct in terms of the p.t.s.d. that they're experiencing i talked just real quick meal about how you know why you think that that goes so underdiagnosed and why these people are sent back to the battlefield time and time again. well that's sort of just the nature the the way the military those things that they soldiers are all volunteer force and they stay in the army or the iranians or the baby or whatever prejudice for a lot of years and the military terms cycle them through i was starting with a young former running just yesterday and he was telling me about when he came back

from his tours in iraq and afghanistan he had to do a g.p.s. . as it was administered by the military and you said it was sort of a joke for us this he could have filled out any answers on this test that he wanted and as long as he avoided certain sort of chill tales as long as they were certain things the military was very happy to send him back into the battle and i think that shows that the military really needs the soldiers and it and it there's a temptation to turn a blind eye so the problems that you can see when men and women come back to the battlefield there's some taishan to recycle them very quickly throw them back to the sales or rack or them so that i think that ambition that foundation may be by the military but it may also be by the soldiers themselves and by a you know the public when you grow up here in the u.s. you're taught that you know when a man or woman puts

a uniform on this country that person is a hero most older sailors and marines are sons of believe that about themselves sometime back and more than this once or twice there is a huge difference between nobility and reality i'm wondering now if you think that this incident will change things will start the discussion about the fact that just because you served doesn't necessarily mean you're here. i think that's a very very interesting for you but it's also very blue in the united states we don't like to impugn our heroes in any way but i do think that the american. case for violence is very low so we were used to. a long time ago the idea of violence there was a more very much so warrior was sort of. you know he was famous or well regarded depending on what kind of violence you. were so far from that in modern society

that we want our heroes to be very quickly we want to. but if they do too much violence or they don't. speak then we sort of you can disown them and i think that we're trying to do that. very interesting for i know neal you've spent quite some time working next to soldiers in afghanistan yet you've written a lot about it and i know recently you wrote a pretty realistic picture of what some of the soldiers were like they they kill dogs for no reason they broke into homes and vandalized furniture of some of these afghan civilians these are stories that often go i'm told as you say it is a taboo subject it it makes me feel uncomfortable to talk about because i grew up in this country i was taught this that that you know always support the troops no matter what i'm wondering if you found it difficult to report on the men and women who i mean you were working right next to you were sleeping next to you. but to

report accurately about it. the nature of the embedded journalist process in the record set is sort of very complicated but you say it with these men and women. and you rely upon them for your security for your safety for your transportation or your lodging for everything at the same time you're trying to get an accurate story about the challenges they face and the way they behave and i know that for me as well as for many of my colleagues it's difficult to. between. an overly sympathetic broaching and trying to really get the story to bring home to people in the united states and show them what it's really like as far as we can on the battlefield that's a very difficult thing certainly very very difficult journalist and writer neal say to appreciate your insight an afternoon. oh there's no denying the last few years the economy has been a rough one i have to do is look around to see that we're living in

a time where things have to be cut when the money isn't there the projects funded by that money often go away as well but there are some exceptions to this rule so we want to take a look at some of the specific programs and talk about why some are going forward and some are dead on arrival first of walkies martin and more specifically the f. thirty five program being developed for the pentagon it costs nearly a trillion dollars to develop purchase and support through twenty fifty now there are already more than a billion dollars over budget and the government has agreed to pay for a lot of this program six hundred seventy two billion dollars unlock it will cover the rights. then there's another project high speed rail in california connecting the southern part of california to the north and the cost ranges between thirty billion and one hundred billion about depending on who you ask i just buy this project being in the works for years as of now it is a train to nowhere so of course these projects are very different but why would one

be going forward on the other one meter rail and talked about this with someone very familiar with the defense industry michael o'brian a former contractor for the department of defense in iraq the author wrote the book america's failure in iraq and here is his take well they are totally different one is one is a quote defense program and the other one is a strictly defense transportation program the the thirty five. this might actually be the very same program that when there was the big fight going on in the ninety's secretary defense at the time cheney actually made a comment i think it's the same program but i'm not one hundred percent made a comment that he was going to have the utah to contracting officer and have the the you procurement cancelled which of course he has no right to do contracting officer cannot be told what to do by anybody the president even the person in the united states which was the secretary of defense this particular contract is very

likely what's called a cost plus contract. very technical war weapon systems like what the thirty five hour a cost plus contract is one way or. competitors' the one that gets awarded the procurement. is paid directly for all of the costs incurred for the development of the manufacture of the a weapon system plus their overhead no profit so if you want a contract like this and i'm very sure this would be a cost plus contract as opposed to a firm fixed price contract where are they when the procurement and the government says we're going to pay x. amount for each unit and that's that will they can't do it for something like this because technology and prices and the cost for making it change over there were time when the time the contracts awarded until delivery delivery of the first unit

the problem is that this thing is so expensive very likely because. me because the air force has changed it so many times all these change orders are jacking up the price but when you think about why the air force and other units of the military have the ability to change and take as much time as they need i think it's hard to deny that at least in part there is an aspect of lobbying and thought i want to take a look here we have the money that basically shows that muscle flex by lockheed martin basically this shows that since one thousand eight hundred lockheed martin has spent more than twenty three million dollars on campaign financing and they've spent more than one hundred twenty five and a half million on lobbying and they've also received more than twenty million dollars in earmarks now i don't michael this should not be shocking but it still is . i mean what do you think no lobbyist no dice this is this is an example par

excellence or excellence of the military industrial complex which are right about it at length in my book. you just showed the numbers money talks. when and when a defense contractor stands that kind of money they are buying votes three or they were bought they were paying for politicians to vote in favor of this particular weapon system that was michael o'brien author of america's failure in iraq. well it's not a secret there is often a fine line between crossing the line and speaking the truth and in the game of politics that most people err on the side of political correctness but for comedians well sometimes the truth is the best ingredient for laughter and sometimes it's being ironic can also be funny i think at the gates of robert de niro just this week he was at a democratic fundraiser along with the first lady michelle obama and while

introducing our he said calista gingrich karen santorum and romney now do you really think our country is ready for a white first lady so a lot of people found this funny and romney said that she laughed at the joke but apparently close to gingrich didn't find it so funny her husband newt called the remark remarks inexcusable and divisive i know you quite well know you have a great sense of humor but you really feel offended by robert de niro or was it just the transfer work of democrat. i really think the use of racism going democrats is just as well as the use of racism where republicans and i really think it's wrong to use racial references like birth. rates robert deniro apologized michelle obama's office called the joke inappropriate so is this just politics or is it yet another example that political incorrectness will be shunned in the society earlier i spoke to political comedian dean obeidallah and got his take on

whether american society is an offensive unapologetic nation take a listen. i think there are too many insincere apologies i think there are too many people asking for apologies and i think that at this point we're stifling comedy i'm a comedian you know i wrote an article for c.n.n. dot com earlier this week or stop the war on comedy and that's what this is we love to do is joke let's be honest who would be offended by that of the new rich who is sailing in the republican party killing his own party to support him and trying to get some media coverage but that's all it is in the hyper partisan world that we're in and the media cycle twenty four hours needing new news new gingrich says if he gets the media for about five minutes that's it but it's not just for it's not just the g.o.p. candidate you know there was also the incident a few weeks ago with rush limbaugh who by the way is a known offender and the call was heated to pull advertising money from his show after he called the georgetown grad student a slut after she testified before congress saying birth control should be made more accessible what do you think do you think there's a difference because she's

a private citizen or is this just another good excuse to get people to turn against rush limbaugh what's going on with that. well hi i think it might be a combination but let's be honest the comedy about people in power should be completely except that you have to have comedians great leeway when they talk about a person who's running for president who's a governor who's a senator we cannot allow to stifle political comedy because that is in effect pulled expression it's a way that expressing our views and in having a discussion political discourse when rush limbaugh attacks a private citizen even our libel laws in america do not protect public figures like they do a private citizen there's the suitable difference in our legal system so rush limbaugh things so out of he's not a comedian there's nothing to it comedy and let's be honest we all know the difference when somebody's being funny and playful and somebody demonizing and spewing hate were simply spewing hate and even republicans came out against that comment it and then as they began to gather the wagons they started launching a counterattack against bill maher and louis c.k.

and now robert de niro they can distract us from rush limbaugh i wish the conversation stay with rush limbaugh and what he had said to me it's all an attempt by some on the far right not even mainstream right on the far right to get away from rush limbaugh so we attack the left not so we do it clouds the issue how is it for you dana i mean you're it you're a comedian i'm wondering if you can gauge how often you know what generates the most laughs is that when you're at a seems to me at least in the things i find most funny and how many are things that are a little bit offensive but they're true. well i think audiences when they're watching you in a comedy club they know when you're being the demon izing and hateful they understand instantly and we know as comedians we've gone too far the audience not laughing or don't laugh at all or actually get angry at you see it one on one when you're on t.v. you know if your audience is doing i see them comedy called sometimes people are like little comedy but if they don't agree with it sometimes they don't laugh and that's life in america we have to protect political comedy it's always going to be the visit because there's an opinion and you're not always going to agree with the

opinion and if we stifle that it affects freedom of expression you know enough to be on in the comedy clubs in new york you hear so much worse things that were most said of whom are louis c.k. but when you're not famous like most comics in new york and they're really television not famous shit they can say anything it's famous people held to a different standard that's part of this i'm wondering if you think i mean clearly a comedy comedian on a stage in a comedy club is different than yes you know this whole political sphere that we live in here in washington especially but do you think things have changed though or has it always been have the us always been overly politically correct or have things gotten worse in the wake of sort of this more bipartisan era that we live in or not bipartisan more partisan era that it was the aisle to the hyper partisan exactly i agree with you i think in some ways dealing with political comedy it has gotten worse but look at our history ninety in the sixty's lenny bruce the comedian was arrested in new york the glue is sitting in

a blue state for cursing too much at a comedy club in the village so those days of change we devolve to the point where we can say almost anything you know people are offended by comments by louis c.k. and bill maher about sarah palin they may have been offensive words but when they're about a political figure somebody in power we must have comedians leeway same thing if someone's on the right attacking a democratic candidate or the president and saying hateful things you know what it's about the policy or about the person in power we have we need more leeway if it's just demonizing homophobic racist comments anti women comments. and they have nothing to with someone in power demonizing somebody outside of power but the consequence is that you have to deal with it and if you can overcome it for you if you can't you know you make you late in the big you me to be hateful and spew hate is the answer for it and what do you think are the results to live in a society where people are overly politically correct where people get offended so easily or at least pretend to i mean do you think some people lose out about way there's a little there is a fear of a chilling effect that perhaps people want to speak their mind on certain issues

but again i have great confidence in the audiences in the american people they know the difference between someone who's being hateful and being playful we all know the difference unfortunate newt gingrich in his case just insert himself into a situation to get some press he doesn't care about the issue and romney mitt romney's wife had no problem she laughed at the joke she thought was funny it's a funny joke where was the hate that where was the demonizing anyone without playing on any stereotype whatsoever newt gingrich on t.v. literally right now or before i was on watching him saying the reason people think president obama's a muslim is because he acts like a muslim i mean look at the man who is spewing hate calling of others for a joke that was not in full all that you know gingrich to me as a paradox and a fraud frankly i think that's a really good comparison and we thought you'd be a good person to talk about this and you really are right we really appreciate your insight political comedian dean obeidallah in our new york studios all right well it's friday but be sure to tune in to our team next week we have some new stories lined up for you here's

a little preview our founding fathers have life liberty and the pursuit of happiness in mind and they fought to create a new nation and if lawmakers could remake that motto it might say life liberty and the pursuit of money and not everyone is on board with that fact hat mentality where the american economic model as a whole will be talking to a few of them. and one eleven might have been the year of the protests or but it turns out it was also the year of the hacktivist more than one hundred million users had their data compromised by groups like anonymous and the old sec and that might be only the beginning we'll tell you what they stole and what if anything was accomplished and activist groups aren't the only ones going through information covertly so are local law enforcement agencies and we already knew that they were monitoring muslims but now new information shows that the n.y.p.d. is actually spying on liberals will break it down for you that's all coming up new next week along with of course much more news and in-depth interviews so you should keep it tuned right here to our t.v. .