welcome to the launch channel we'll get the real headlines with none of them are safe and alive in washington d.c. now it's not going to speak with michael hastings about the new drone policy of the cia's pushing for and get it they want to be able to strike even when they don't know who it is that they're killing then we're going to speak to a pakistani lawyer the represents the families of victims of drone strikes he's trying to come to the u.s. to attend the first international drone conference but the state department won't let him in and an increasing amount of states are trying to fix their budget woes by creating new criminal justice fees are the result here is more people being imprisoned and saddled with that you have all of that and more feet and i including

those of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided to meet. well it's been a long week of scandals and historic moments so the mainstream media has really been all over the place and squeezing every little thing that they can out of stories of colombian prostitutes lavish vegas retreats for government agencies and everything else that's going on out there. he's a guy con an entertainment mogul dick clark as you know he died yesterday at the age of eighty two three of the eleven agents involved in the secret service scandal or out shuttle discovery be introduced its new home at the smithsonian's national air and space museum secret service agents plan to talk today with rocker ted nugent that meeting follows as nugent made over the weekend at an n.r.a. convention remark that some took suggesting violence against president obama it is the end of the line at the secret service for three agents who have now been forced

out it is hard to talk about the importance of dick clark and bringing rock and roll straight into the living rooms of middle class americans ceremony to welcome the space shuttle discovery into its collections sex scandal involving the president's secret service lawmakers demanding answers and the clock is ticking there are new calls for the g.s.a. to quote clean house at the upper levels of that organization three agents involved in the scandal are out one was allowed to retire another was fired a third resigned ted nugent the singer and conservative activist making some comments at an n.r.a. conference this past week and caught the attention of the secret service smithsonian will hold a ceremony to officially receive the space shuttle discovery which arrived in d.c. on tuesday on top of a seven forty seven. so there's been a lot going on but i'd like to highlight yet another story out there that hasn't received even a minutes of coverage from the cable networks and you know it's

a pretty big deal and it raises a lot of issues for human rights the way that we deal with torture which if you've been paying attention for the last ten years you know isn't very well but this time it's not about our government not holding anyone accountable for the people that have been tortured under our watch torrie just the fact that we deemed fifty people out there on trial because we can't let them dare see a courtroom because we've done such a bad thing so that. you know that i can rant about that for days and days and days that this is another interesting development that applies from a different perspective and also do with the story of or he an american citizen was visiting the west bank in one thousand nine hundred five there he was arrested and tortured and ultimately killed by the p.l.o. so under a law called the torture victim protection act one was passed in one thousand nine hundred one his family has been trying to sue the p.l.o. and the palestinian authority now the law allows civil suits in federal courts by citizens and non-citizens against an individual who subjects another to torture or

extrajudicial killing but the supreme court ruled unanimously this week that this law can only apply to an individual and not to afford organization so basically his family can't seek justice for his torture and ultimately his death and it's really unfortunate and supreme court justice sonia sotomayor who wrote the majority opinion here of knowledge this is bad for victims but she actually blamed congress for writing the law so the definition of individual limits the liability to a natural person now might seem up scared to you but it is worth paying attention to if there were attention directed towards it the maybe congress would actually rework this law and maybe there would be more ways to see justice for the victims of torture or not yet so we decided that's worth highlighting this week but for now the mainstream media has chosen to miss. well guess what's been leaked to the washington post by anonymous u.s.

officials just read the headline cia seeks new off already to expand yemen drone campaign that's right courting to these officials the cia wants the authority to launch signature strikes signature strikes means that they don't have to know the identities of those who could be killed but they can hit the targets based solely on intelligence which indicates patterns of suspicious behavior now these types of strikes are already employed in pakistan and the targets there have been funeral ceremonies the victims have turned out to be civilians at times and the president chose not to give the go ahead for this policy in yemen a year ago so it's still a big if as to whether or not this time around like a different but yes or no it raises a lot of questions so joining me from our studio in new york is michael hastings rolling stone contributing editor and author of the book the operators the wild and terrifying inside story of america's war in afghanistan michael thanks for joining us tonight and i don't know what you think the cia wants more authority to kill people from afar with a question of

a button even if they don't really know exactly who it is that they're shooting at . well what we've seen first thanks for having me what we've seen over the past few years especially with the embrace of the drone program is the cia has essentially become a paramilitary organization they've gone out of the business they still do this sort of collecting intelligence and into the business of what is essentially mass mass targeted killings or mass assassinations and what we saw in pakistan is that as you as you said they do this signature drone policy which they look for signs of mongoose of people to indicate that they're militants they don't assume that the identities of everyone involved and then to launch a strike versus just targeting a high value targets or particular individuals who they are specifically trying to kill now moving it into yemen raises as you said a whole host of questions we don't know what the long term effect of this sort of policy is going to have we can look at pakistan in what we see there is that the more strikes we've done the less popular we become among the pakistani people and i

wouldn't be surprised if that's the same result in yemen but i'm just curious then what the logic is behind a move like this you know our next guest tonight is actually a pakistani lawyer who represents the families of victims. there in pakistan and more often than not of course people don't actually go to an attorney and try to seek justice in the courtroom unfortunately they you know they they try to take up arms because of this resentment towards americans and we've seen jeremy scahill document already what our policy in yemen has done and so why do they think that if we just have more drone strikes. you know a lot more often then it's somehow going to have the opposite effect. well people at the cia would think we're living in this sort of fantasy la-la world of liberal delusion sensually. in the believing there are people within the white house who believe this is well known enough security council that this is the most effective way to prevent terrorists from attacking united states it's to have sort of

a persistent constant or centrally artillery you know campaign against against suspected militants so they really believe truly sincerely believe that the best way to make american safer and to keep america to keep terrorists from coming here is to blow them up over there now you said that the cia has become more of a paramilitary organization rather than an intelligence organization but if you think about what this new policy would tell that means that we it's a more lethal policy and you know we care less about who the casualties are going to be what would you call that you know i terror tactic a terrorist tactic. well i think it's very difficult to defend what we're doing on moral grounds but moral grounds aren't really being you know weighed here i don't think tremendously certainly not from the cia's perspective the cia's prime objective is to prevent or to get blamed if you know if he gets attacked again and

so there they think that by continuing to strike these targets and yet certainly there are people who are clearly civilians who have been terrorized by by this sort of attack so they believe that this is going to be the way to prevent future strikes now you know what the like and what the long term impact of this is going to be how it actually plays out are we actually making ourselves safer by doing this i don't i'm not sold on it but you have to remember there is zero political cost for the administration to go along with this policies zero democrats think it's a great idea the progressives are willing to sort of sacrifice pakistani and many civilians for sort of perceived security and for the fact that they want the democrats to look tough on national security so they're not going to use this as an issue you know i wrote about that just this week in rolling stone too and it is

this love affair that this administration seems to have with the drone program sell taking all that into account what's your guess do you think that the president is going to sign off on it this time to get him to go ahead. i see the problem is once these leaks happen right then the president's put in a position where if there is a small chance or the chip of the chance that there is a terrorist attack that emanates from yemen and then all of a sudden you're going to have all these leaks and to see it and say hey look we could have done something why did the president prevent us from keeping americans safe people within the defense establishment were going to make that argument so it's a much lower cost to go along with the program especially when this sort of debate becomes public there's a very specific reason when these leaks happen to a place like the washington post is a very specific reason that they're happening oh let's talk about the fact that things like this get lead to the washington post you know on one hand you have for example the eight c.l.u. which has been trying to submit a four year request to try to get information from the government especially when

it came to the drone strike that took out on or are lucky and their response was well we can't confirm or deny the existence of our drone program and so we can't talk about it in court but then why is it ok to leak things like this and they can have this giant headline on the washington post. yeah when you start covering it and when i started looking into this drone issue in detail you do enter into what i called in the story the sort of kafka esque world where we're talking about a secret program that everyone knows about certainly it's not secret to people in pakistan or people in yemen but the but it's most secret to the american public it's only used at specific times by government officials only talk about it at specific times when they feel like it's to their advantage that need to get to control the narrative they get to control the information and any requests that they don't want to deal with people like myself who from the media they say oh no it's a top secret program we can't talk about it you know it's the height of it's certainly

the height of hypocrisy but that's nothing new why i think you also to look at the way that people report on this because if you look at this washington post piece i don't try to claim that the obama administration so far has had a lot of constraints when it comes to its drone program in yemen and they call the killing of anwar locky sixteen year old son inadvertant but yet they also want to claim that this entire time they've been knowing exactly who they've been going after you know and some of the pieces just don't add up there and i don't think anyone really knows whether this was inadvertent or not you know you spoke with with his grandfather with anwar a lot it's father what was his take right oh well he was certainly devastated by the loss of his son but in particular i think by the loss of his grandson as well there are people within the white house who have tried to put the brakes on the cia's kind of power mad drone everybody to death program i think i think that's real i think what we saw in the post when you had a senior administration official quoted as saying he looked like we don't know if

it's a great idea i think that note of caution is a very real the question is can they win that battle with the if there's sort of this persistent campaign to keep sort of going to expanding the program me in yemen all right i want to switch topics a little bit real quick but somebody that you've written about a lot in your book michael flynn now has been nominated to be the head basically the intelligence agency for the defense department what's your take right. yes general mike flynn was not made to be the head of the defense intelligence agency he was described to me by colleagues as a rat on acid he's considered a genius within the intelligence circles. the attribute the success of the jay sock program in iraq where we wiped out literally hundreds if not thousands of of. alleged insurgents and whatnot to him so clearly he was a rising star within the the intelligence world he was very close together

mcchrystal and general kristol lost his job fully and went into sort of the wilderness for about you know a year and a half but now clearly he has enough juice and people think you don't get enough that they're putting him back in charge of this extremely vital and sensitive program all right so he's back and then you know really quick before we go to say yes you know what you character he is a wacky character i'll give you that yesterday of a four times published these photos from a u.s. soldier of soldiers posing with the corpse of the afghan insurgent and i mean it's another story right another horrible p.r. story especially in the last four months of this year for the war in afghanistan but i already feel like this story has disappeared and it hasn't even carried on for more than one day why do you think that is. well look i think that it's so difficult to get the country's attention focused on afghanistan i mean we're going into two war of ten years there's zero popular support for the war very little

popular support and you know you don't have president obama coming out there every day and making a case for a war in afghanistan in fact the opposite is true right president obama is already running against the war sensually during his a reelection campaign so you know people don't really want to pay attention to it will pay attention to when he gets shown flat flash in their faces like with the l a times story i would note that they only publish to about eight hundred photographs so there are sixteen other photographs that are much worse that they didn't publish so i think to get the story more attention they'd have to release those other sixteen photos well we'll see if they actually go for it i michael thanks so much for joining i even i e-mailed them today and asked them to release those photos by the way so they haven't got back to me yet but i'll see if they do all called wish them. well keep a lookout thanks for joining us. artists are far far as break the evening but when we come back what do michael jackson the obama administration the son of an african leader and due process all have in common what they came to find out and then

charles dickens might be dead but there's persons certainly aren't going to tell you about the increasing number of people being locked up and saddled with even more death after the break. you know story and the scene so you think you understand it and then you know here's the other part of it and realize that everything you saw. was a big. mystery

. but in the alone itself you know there's a real headline with not. a problem with the mainstream media today is that they're completely disconnected from the viewers and from what actually matters to those viewers and so that's why young people just don't watch t.v. if they want news they go online and read it and we're trying to take the stories that people actually care about and transfer them back to t.v. . is the state run english speaking russian channel it's kind of like.

russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us. this time. the light will come and. say must you why are supposed to be singing. and i we have a glimmer of hope focusing around the glimmering that we spent a lot of time on the show talking about i still mean seizures and it seems like the obama administration's montra when it comes to see things that people seizing people's property is don't stop till you get enough remember the time that they accidently seize eighty four thousand websites during operation save our children even though the war that they got from the judge only authorized them to take down ten sites well a lot of people out there have been hoping that somebody would stand up against

these seizures by the government without due process just waiting for a case where somebody would put their foot down and it appears this is it now doesn't have to do with domain names or web sites but a different type of property you see back in october the obama administration sees about seventy one million dollars worth of assets from teodoro gamma obeying me he is the son of the president of equitorial guinea and the obama administration says that the government iniquity oriel guinea is rampant with corruption with people at the top controlling seventy percent of the nation's wealth while the rest of the country lives in poverty now they claim with the president's son who currently lives in the us has a history of participating in extortion and his wealth was the result of corrupt feelings in his home country and you know just a sidebar here but maybe as long as the obama admin is seizing millions of dollars worth of property they should be taking a look at the man in the mirror but back some may do what they claim are his connections to his home countries corruption they seized his yachts cars jets and

his mansion and that's not all they took they also sees a white crystal covered glove worn by michael jackson during his bad world tour now apparently is a bit of a celebrity memorabilia collector but he isn't the only m.j. fan in the story remember what obama said after the singer died. i think that michael jackson is. will go down in history as one of our greatest entertainers. i grew up on his music. still have all of the all the stuff from my i pod there. yeah he may have gone too soon but we all know his music is immortal but we're on to you mr president anything to get your mitts on one of those coveted gloves you smooth criminal our jokes aside the government thieving people's assets without any proof of wrongdoing or charges being filed it's no laughing matter how luckily last week a california judge approved federal judge prove that the obama administration is

not invincible and ruled that the government's justification for the seizure is missing some elements that simply have got to be there and according to the judge the government must prove that they actually amassed his fortune illegally under equitorial guinea law now the judge his own words the government's case for seizing the items was framed in a vague generalized matter and the judge is going to give the obama administration a chance to prove those things and it very well may turn out that this guy's a bad guy and they have the right to do it but the point is you need evidence before you just see this so it looks like they're not going to get away with seizing materials without ever filing charges or proving that crime occurred at least not this time around and that to me is a true glimmer of hope. well it's been over twenty years since the supreme court ruled that you cannot imprison those that are too poor to pay or that let me the debtors prisons no longer exist quite the opposite the number of people being jailed for failing to pay criminal justice fees is increasing and it

disproportionately affects the core of the problem is only getting worse as states with budget crises of past new policies increase the kinds of fees that they have to bring in revenue and not only adding to the prison population trapped in this visuals cycle the prison system but is it also more financial burden on the taxpayers if it's gusset with alex to bart professor of economics at george mason university and research director for the independent institute he also co-writes the marginal revolution blog thanks so much for joining us tonight and i guess if we can just start before we get into some of the really crazy stuff he wrote about that stand out there what are these general criminal justice these that are normally applied. it could range everything so as soon as somebody is convicted they are charge a judgment free to charge a transportation fee when they're put in a jail or charge a room and board fee to get out of jail they have to pay for

a probation fee ones that are on probation and and on parole there are often fees for drug testing fees for counseling to go to a psychologist these are mandatory fees and even people are now even being charged to apply for and to use a public defender or that last one right there seems. insane to me i think that you mention the and one state not only are you getting charged to apply for a public defender but also in cases where where you're not actually guilty they want you to pay for this i feel like that has to be illegal or unconstitutional or something like that. i think it is unconstitutional but it's going on every day there are poor people who are being put into jail simply because they can't pay even in these small fines and yes to access a public defender here in florida and in ohio even if you're not convicted you still have to pay and if you don't pay the court will take away your driver's

license and then if you drive and are arrested then you could be thrown in jail for any original crime because you're driving without a license because you couldn't pay the fee that you were forced to pay because of a charge which you weren't even convicted of the whole thing is insane so who really makes money off of this at the end of the day you know i mean you mention of course that a lot of the states are now increasing all these fees because so many of them have physical crises of their own but the more people that you keep in jail that and the more you know state money you're going to actually have to spend on it yeah that's exactly right i think this is a case of the the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing on the one hand the or charging people and thinking oh we're going to raise all this money from these taxes and these fees and and probation and so forth ration reason so forth and yet. you can't get blood from a stone and met most of the people who are felony defendants they're poor they

don't have the money to pay so the end because they can't pay a thirty five dollars fee the end of being in jail for ten days which is much much more expenses so really no one is benefiting from this we owe our people can free themselves from that ball and chain which is pulling them back in to the criminal justice system and it's costing us more money rather than less because we have to pay for more people in jail instead of letting people out and actually earning some money well let's talk about the ball and chain you know the mention if you want to keep getting pulled back into i mean obviously once you go to jail you have a record so it makes it a lot more difficult for you to find work apply for certain loans after that but also you know so let's say that you're put in prison because you can't pay your debts does that affect your credit. it affects your credit rating it means it's much harder to get a department it also means if you have some criminal justice fine which you have

not paid then you're no longer eligible for social security you're no longer eligible for aid for welfare payments you're no longer eligible even for disability payments so we get in this downward spiral where for you know lack of a nail people lose their entire lives just cumulus and all of these charges by the way there's interest on them so people go and the interest builds and builds and builds and then they're put in jail because they haven't paid the fee and then that gives them an another fee on top of the on that one that the going to still hadn't paid and it just adds and adds and we end up with a lot of people who even though they may be trying they may be trying to pay off some of this bad just balloons and accumulates and crushes that if you believe in having so many of these fees and general i had because he wrote about it and he

said they it's difficult to argue against these things for somebody they can afford it first and somebody who who actually can but some of these things that are absolutely crazy to me for example the one about the public defender i don't think it should matter whether you're rich or poor why should you have to pay for a public defender. right and when you require people to pay a lot of people say well no i can't afford to pay a public defender so they don't even get representation in a court of law now you know i'm actually i want to be make something clear i'm actually a lone order kind of person i'm going to contest i'm pro deterrent ok but in order to make the turn to work it has to be swift it has to be sure but then like bankruptcy it must and it must have a defined any point if we want to reintegrate people into civil society so you know just as with a child you want to when a child is something wrong you want to give them a slap on the wrist a punishment put them into timeout but you don't hold it against them forever after

they put in the after the child has been put into the timeout corner and some cases get back to normal life reintegrate them they're still loved bring them back into society into the family the same thing is true with criminals you want to slap on the slap me or whatever not get him some punishment but then you want to say here is the route that you can follow to get back on your feet to become a productive member of civil society and we're not following this anymore we're punishing them forever not giving them that route back to re-integrate and yet still letting them out on the streets it doesn't make sense for anyone now it's definitely not the way to things for our thoughts thanks so much for joining us tonight. high five for not afraid that we come back we'll have another edition of a shilling hell for you and then we'll be speaking a pakistani lawyer for drone victims who was refused entry to the u.s. for.

let's not forget that we sat in a parked car he wrote. i think. on the oil. we never got the says they're going to keep him safe get ready because you believe your friend. gave. up in the aloneness so they'll get the real headlines with none of them are the problem with the mainstream media today is that they're completely disconnected from the viewers and for what actually matters to those viewers and so that's why young people just don't watch t.v. anymore if they want news they go online and read it but we're trying to take those stories that people actually care about and transfer them back to t.v. .