the headline from r t a ten pm moscow time a syrian official confirms troops are starting to be withdrawn from cities as part of international peace plan while the opposition says western and arab states are promising the millions of dollars to step up against the regime. corruption at the top of india's army sees a shake up of arms purchasing with russian suppliers in line to fill in behind fired for also. making it easier to get the party started in russia president dmitri medvedev signs into law reforms to the political system however some opposition leaders still on topic. on

a high level slurs a senior f.b.i. official claims russian spies a siren and a chaplain was extradited for getting too close to someone inside of. there our top story washington d.c. has a lot of takes on the big guys the next sixty minutes. welcome to the larger show ok the real headlines with none of the mersey i can live in washington d.c. now some are going to speak with chris hedges about his lawsuit against the obama administration over the da then kevin zeese and bruce fein join us for our monday hangover panel we'll talk syria nuclear drones and a supreme court ruling on strip searches in prison and jordan flaherty found out of the n.y.p.d. came all the way out to new orleans to monitor him at

a political event or get the story from him first hand while fall back on morphine tonight including a dose of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided to me. all right so there's a pretty disturbing story out there today that we've learned about thanks to the a.c.l.u. and it involves not better all agencies doing national security related investigations but local police departments hundreds of them tracking your cell phones. this study finds that numerous police departments across the country are now using cell phone tracking often without court orders to find suspects and then investigate criminal cases and you see all you surveyed more than two hundred law enforcement agencies and most said that they use cell phone tracking the new york times also reporting this crisis has become big business for cell phone companies to charge surveillance these to police departments they can talk two thousand dollars. and i think that

a story like this is more than just mildly disturbing hundreds of police departments across the country tracking cell phones often without warrants and they're trying to hide it was the a.c.l.u. found not only does this information contradict the public statements that we hear from law enforcement officials but they also found training manuals when i was city police department it says in quotes do not mention to the public or the media the use of cell phone technology or equipment used to locate the target subject and then you also advises not to put this stuff into the police reports so does not make you feel safe law enforcement is doing something that they know would probably cause public outrage and which they know raises legal questions so their solution is not to stop doing it no of course not their solution is just to hide it from you now i have to give us n.b.c. some credit today because out of all the cable networks they were the only ones that even touched on this story apparently fox c.n.n.

they didn't find all that alarming but then take a listen to what robert says at the end of this clip. some police departments routinely get search warrants they go to work or they present probable cause and they get a warrant to track to do anything they want to do concerning suspects self others just go out and do it as a matter of fact you can buy a police chief or they can and have blocked software or tracking programs for about a quarter of a million dollars where they don't even have to go to the cell phone company they can do it themselves so are they going to get a search warrant and present it to themselves to be able to do this these are that you know these are the challenges i think for law enforcement and the criminal justice system as technology gets ahead of our ability to actually deal with there's wiggle room over the oversight in all this in the schools of thought would be some people are going to say well i've got nothing to hide so who cares the other people are going to say well this is big brother just invading because they

can. yeah maybe it's just a little wiggle room right now the truth is that there are a lot of legal questions out there that have yet to be answered the supreme court's ruling on g.p.s. devices thrown this practice into question the specific use of cell phone tracking has been ruled on differently by a number of judges across the united states that's the case and i think it's about time we get a definitive answer don't you always say to most americans say that they don't care they have nothing to hide i think most americans would care michael differently for turns out that what the police were doing is illegal they're law enforcement yet many departments aren't even bothering to get warrants because they can get the technology on their own i'm you know going through the court system getting a warrant all that stuff is this. but hello you're law enforcement's are you supposed to be providing an example for the rest of us and should the mainstream media be expecting the same you know it's just another sign or ever expanding surveillance state once being sold to the people as

a buffer against terrorism but the truth is it's being used by law enforcement all the time to track people that have nothing to do with a terror. or is a related investigation so we need to wake up and speak out about these practices before every shred of our privacy is gone but the fewer people that know about it the lower the chances that we can fight back and the mainstream cable media is not doing its part to inform the public good on us and receiver spending a few minutes on the topic today but out of a twenty four hour news cycle believe me it was just a blip and the rest well they simply chose to miss. last thursday we reported to you that a group of political activists and journalists testified in a new york court about why they are suing the obama administration over the national defense authorization act or the and the i.a.e.a. and the seven plaintiffs including chris hedges daniel ellsberg and i'm chomsky

they are given not only does the provision of the n.b.a. that allows for indefinite military detention allow the us government to arrest of aliens all over the world skirt due process but the loosely defined keywords a supporter of terrorism or associated forces those threaten free speech i could even if i journalists reporting on the so-called war on terror now here's how me wolf speaking about this last thursday at a press conference held after the hearing. to give the journalists up here serious journalist going to think they're going to come get us tomorrow they're think we're all crazy experiencing a chilling effect and infernally anecdotally i'm hearing it from many many journalists when they're on it you know. how we do our work so that harms our legal standing and that's why i think it's important. so tonight let's speak to one of the plaintiffs in person here discuss with me is chris hedges pulitzer prize winning reporter and senior fellow at the nation

institute he's also author of his latest book death of the. press thanks so much for being back on the show tonight if you are you and i spoke about this before shortly after you first decided to pursue this lawsuit against the obama administration but now let's talk about this right you nice work about how this is an incredibly troubling and really scary step that now you can allow for the definite military detention even of u.s. citizens despite of course a promise by the president that he wouldn't do it that this is a big deal so why are there only seven plaintiffs you know why isn't this the biggest lawsuit we've ever seen well first of all the has received very little publicity including my former employer the new york times. it is. a piece of legislation that. was essential is supported by r r r r two political parties by both parties and indeed the response of the bill or carl levin democrat and john mccain republican there was no outcry within

the the systems of power itself and out of course that there was no outcry when in the media which allows those systems of power to set the parameters of all debate and that's why it is an extremely frightening piece of legislation because of as you pointed out the sort of vagueness of the language itself what is substantially supported me i mean what is supported me what is substantially mean what is the end of hostilities you can seize american citizens who are accused of covered persons as the term of either substantially supporting al-qaeda or the taliban or what they call associated forces again a term that is not defined and i think one of the most telling moments in the trial thursday was at the end of the day when judge forrest asked the government attorneys directly more than once several times would this legislation permit the

government to detain any of these plaintiffs and in question after question after question the assistant attorney ben torrance refused to offer those kinds of guarantees he could not answer the question right now did you did the judge ask him to say can you define specifically when yet is it in your blood is it outside of precisely and and they would not define those terms because they can't those terms are expendable and i think when you referred to the president signing statement which he issued it's very important to realize that that has no legal standing in the signing statement the promise is that his administration would not use it but there is nothing in that signing statement to prohibit the government from. using it and certainly most importantly for future administrations from using that mechanism to. carry out in essence acts of extraordinary rendition on american soil against american citizens are going to bring up another example here too so we hear

al qaeda and associated forces in essence and when we start asking about these very vague definitions of what an associated force is let's talk about the enemy right right now we see really a massive campaign to get listed off the state department's list of terrorist organizations some of the people that are pushing for this are former mayors former officials within the government they've actually taken money at speaking events and now we've actually seen an investigation launched into this because of a supreme court ruling that said you can't provide material support these organizations but could anything be considered an associated force. i mean this is on the terrorism list. and it hasn't been lifted yet exactly but so it could be put on any organization right list right now well what's an associated force it could be any organization on the list and lots of other organizations that are not on the list that are considered associated force so this is the problem and there's somebody i spent twenty years as

a foreign correspondent and when we went through the terrorism list there were seventeen groups on that list including al qaida but i have had as a reporter direct contact with it and there is no provision in there to protect journalists at all or anyone anybody can be swept up under this and you don't want to him these kinds of powers to the state because history has shown eventually they will use it and i think finally it's important to understand what we're already seeing which is an attempt to take occupy and us day of rage and other groups and this was when they released the wiki leaks of five million e-mails and stroud for the private security company we saw in those e-mails an attempt to link us day of rage directly to the hottest groups and that's the route you're going to go when you create a. surveillance state of this size and this magnitude and i covered east germany i lived in east germany the stasi state they have to perpetuate themselves and they do it through enemies and absurdities and folds narratives and career ism and and

and i think that those of us who brought this lawsuit understand finally that this is not about the other it's not about them it's about us and that's why it's right outside everywhere when you talk about the that's day of rage to it could be something as the usa of rage may have gotten posted on a website right that was considered to harvest web site and therefore if they think there's a tie between the u.s. dave grange and the hottest web site then they can monitor the occupy movement and it becomes this is this vicious circle already seen from the strat for the for e-mail release they've already done and and alexis o'brien who is one of the plaintiffs lost her job because after these kinds of accusations u.s. government officials went to her employer and made investigations or queries about her and she was pulled off projects and then eventually pushed out of her work that is an example of the kind of world we are entering if we are not able to strike back against this legislation what do you think your chances are of actually

winning that's what you're trying to rob you know read the mind of the judge and that's a very difficult thing to do i think it's based on national security i think you're going to see and i think you'll have a hard time denying standing the lawyers coral mayor and would like her to impose a temporary injunction which essentially declares the that section ten twenty one ten twenty two unconstitutional the government of course the challenge of whether she'll go about far i don't know from the questions i think that's a that's. what we're going to see i don't know and so then what happens if you don't you try again we just have to give up and say that's it this is the scary state that we live in now well. i think what you can do is go back and find it depends if i have standing if i don't you know that's the first question you can file you can get more plaintiffs you can file again. i mean it's certainly a blow if we lose. i don't think that there's any question that this is you

know violates the most basic tenets of our constitutional right to due process i just don't see that you know that's an ambiguous whether the courts will stand up to defend the constitution not you know especially given you know what's happened within the u.s. legal system i really think we we don't know and lastly you know beginning of the interview you said that part of the reason this isn't a bigger lawsuit is the biggest lawsuit in the country right now is because the media hasn't given a lot of coverage because it was approved. by both parties they were pushing for it but at the same time this element that you bring into it that journalists could also be at risk because of what you because of covering this war on terror and if you want to give everybody a voice then you're probably going to have to try to talk to some people at the government won't necessarily like the nonsense i would feel like the media would be covering it more like more journalists would be concerned if you know they could affect that there's probably not

a lot of journalists of my extensive contact with groups like hamas or the p.k. k. . are you really talking about a very small and full. and so it's not a large pool to draw from and those who are still employed would need to get permission from their employers to do it and so far we have not seen within the major media organizations the kind of interest in this law that i think they should have shown i couldn't agree with you more on that one chris thanks so much for joining us tonight. right still to come tonight defense contractors have made a whole new type of deadly drone and a supreme court gives their decision when it comes to strip searches so grab your pain pills because we'll have your money hangover after the break. there hasn't been anything good on t.v. . it's to get the maximum political right.

before the source material is born helps keep journalism although we. we want to present. something. lulu we.

want to. be. our guys it's time for our monday hangover panel now just because we had a weekend off in the studio doesn't have there haven't been more foreign policy developments more violence more money committed to projects that some think problem than thought all the way through and so-called friends of syria. group of sixty countries have agreed to pay the salaries and other costs of the free syrian army still waits for assad to act on a peace plan that was accepted last week northrop grumman and sandia national laboratories have created nuclear powered drones they can increase flying time from days to months and a supreme court ruled today that strip searches for new jail inmates are ok regardless of the gravity of their offense so with me today is former deputy

attorney general under president ronald reagan and chairman of the american freedom agenda and kevin zeese co-director of it's our economy an organizer of the national occupation of washington d.c. gentlemen thanks for joining me tonight so ok let's start off with syria tonight and first we have so last week kofi annan offered his peace plan seem to be that assad accepted it and now the international community is still waiting for that to actually take a fact and here's hillary clinton talking about the the urgency as she sees it. there is no more time for excuses or delays this is a moment of truth. so yesterday the friends of syria what they did is they decided to pay the salaries. of the free syrian army and i'm curious as to what exactly that means we don't know what saudis i mean you think that they sign

a contract and say we will do so many shootings of the syrian armed forces in exchange for ten thousand dollars a month it really i think is an effort to try to suggest to president assad that the international community is getting more serious but i think the underlying flaw is this is sort of a second edition of live right now we're seeing the aftermath and follow it there's a session isn't bad guys the black immigrants are now held in detention and torture chambers there is fighting in the south so we armed all these people too and now we have basically a state of nature as opposed to cut off and so we're similarly in syria we have no idea who the people are who would be recent being put on salary and we should have learned from afghanistan when the united states charlie wilson's war was funding who the economy network asama bin ladin been hekmatyar that they ended up there we're funding them they turned their weapons against us and this is another example of the empire mindlessly going and say we have to control everything hey let's just throw money at something that looks good and worrying about the consequences later

what about those people that say for example if you are speaking about libya and so we saw there were some tribal clashes in the south of libya where one hundred sixty four people were killed just over the last six days some would say well you know what do you expect to mock receive doesn't happen overnight but you know i think both syria and libya are part of your problems one is this whole concept of humanitarian war. you know you get so much misinformation from our favorite your sources the corporate media and give us all a scare story go live now we're going to syria not on very reliable sources don't look into question and humanitarian war is necessary but an oxymoron but the search . it's a big problem that really is. important is that we we now have created an executive at the sides we go to war and we totally circumvent the constitution and so the most important part of the constitution was the fact that not one person could bring us to war with the congress to declare war but he had to take the action

there to fund the war and to the clear the war we've lost there and we now have this you know super emperor of the empire and he gets aside when we go to war and that's i think a gigantic problem in the united states and a lot about bruce lee you were here right after president obama actually did send us or you know did an article the peace with its interests over and over libya and what happened there but so i'm still just curious you know if we can go back for one second so let's say that. this peace plan is accepted and basically what that means is everybody lays down their arms you know. heavy weapons are taken out of this of the cities delivery of humanitarian aid for even to journalists is allowed and so then what then suddenly happens to the salaries that we are paying to the free syrian army if everybody follows along with this cease fire oh it looks like we're taking sides in a domestic issue of who ought to be running syria but part of the real problem here is why is the united states involved anyway the fact is that if we have citizens

who want to be great humanitarians and volunteer like we did in the spanish civil war that's one thing the united states has no national security interest is nothing happening in syria this threatens the security of the united states is going to invade the united states or attack us and this is an example of this empire mentality whether it's syria or chad or nigeria or a broom or any other place there is the united states with the military there that's literally all that's what's wrong with the united states we not born as an empire we're born as a republic words of glory was liberty not domination we weren't supposed to be like other countries and now we've turned into the same old roman empire again empire romanov empire. ottoman empire and that's what we need to back away from because it's ruining the entire country and yet here you are and you've heard terry intervention here just make sure you've heard the word on the show that you never hear on the corporate media and are both views that and it's a word that is hidden we are the largest empire in world history by far and it's

never discussed it's one reason we're commies are working as we know it and par you have to satisfy your client states so to give jobs you know so you are coming it's all hell to please your empire needs to be talked about and let's talk about you know one of the things that we see in this shift as well which is that we're not going to have probably these massive standing armies anymore in the future afghanistan just might be the last example of that and we are switching over to drone warfare and we see this in the budgets budgets that it's put out for the pentagon we see this in what we're doing it again in somalia and pakistan and so let's talk about this next story that i have here which is that northrop grumman has been working on creating nuclear powered drones and so they this doesn't mean that they have nuclear bombs. it just means a instead of you know going up in the sky they can be flying around for months at a time without having to refuel and they put the project on hold because they think that the public might not like it and they might worry about it as actually you

know what if this thing crashes and it becomes a dirty bomb is this something we need to be developing will know we don't need to be developing that after all the united states said president spends more on national security than the whole other world combined does anyone really think the united states that anybody in the entire world even going to the moon like newt gingrich threatens our sovereignty no we have so much weapons so much ability to defend ourselves from any kind of aggression this is totally superfluous in addition it's further menacing because now you've got a weapon system being developed that enables us to kill other people without endangering any american and the united states under the stay. department now has said in that circumstances we're killing others is not war it's not hostilities because we're not in danger that even further aggrandize is the president's power because then you can use these predator drones at whim without any congressional involvement that's a question of course the fact that it's the cia's drone program that does

a lot of the dirty work and the cia's drone program can't be confirmed nor denied they refused to talk about it in a lawsuit that they still use bringing against the obama administration right now in terms of the assassination of the serialize not just an intelligence agency it's an operations others. you know a former general or general petraeus the former general in afghanistan and really it's become an operations energy agency and that's you know just not what we need and i think we haven't done very well playing with the droid grown toys so for the predator drone has been misused by president obama more than any other president slaughtering literally slaughtering thousands of civilians why do we want to add to that mistake i think there's been a whole direction of robotic warfare is going to be a major boon to the military weapons makers but it's going to be bad for our sort of robin is essentially that they're cashing in on this writer because they have a feeling that the pentagon at some point be it president obama or some other administration you know five ten years from now someone's going to be interested in

not follow the money is the exact and what else is so ridiculous about this is that all the generals say right now even with the use of drones killing civilians and some militants occasionally in afghanistan today they say it's not a winning formula it's not getting us and it's not a strategy it's not a method of success so what are we doing it is just props out there now to say ok we're flexing their muscle is to say we we killed the number three and the taliban or you know and even if i hear the existence of you before we have to wrap it up here to our last story which is a little bit more domestic but you know also it involves our civil liberties and so . supreme court rules basically that you should just strip search everybody as soon as they get taken into a prison here in the case of albert florence he was arrested because of that he had not paid a fine and then he was strip searched turns out he actually did pay the fine but the court decided that it's better just have one policy for everybody no matter

what your offense and this this line is part of this effort sanctity of a risk free society you know anything that you can do no matter how invasive of someone's right to be left alone someone's right to privacy if you say it could decrease the risk then we ratify and this is just one example oh you know if you didn't strip search everybody maybe somebody could smuggle something in a once in a thousand years and we don't want to take that risk and you cannot have freedom it actually takes iraq the supreme court is all about liberty and freedom we can't be forced to pay a tax for health care but everybody can be forced you know if you don't you don't have the first florida supreme court you have prosecutors. we have in this country a massive criminal justice system one out of five of the world one of the four the world's prisoners are in the united states the land of the free this is a gigantic yorker city that is undermining our freedoms one of thirty two americans is on prison probation or parole and snap

a long strip search of those folks and intrusiveness is just incredible and we have to really stand up to this prison industrial complex that's really all they want is the think of that and compare it to the transportation security administration because now they take pictures of us you know is though we're all naked any cause you know get out there are saying i see it is that we want to fly an airplane now that you know these are your daughter powers at home used against american citizens that's what we're seeing with these t.s.a. the strip searches don't pair of powers everywhere we want to do a bride and you know they're taking our rights here at home and it's scary and i thank you both for joining us thank you. all right coming up i'll respond to viewers in the senate i read it and a.p. has revealed quite a bit of questionable surveillance by the n.y.p.d. so tonight we'll speak to one of the individuals who is on the path to find bust after the break.