top stories this hour see egypt's tahrir square is once again filled with voices of discontent as thousands the solution with the outcome of the revolution protest against the current mood is live pictures from tahrir square at the moment. of clashes between protesters and police in bahrain finally get the attention of the international community as demonstrators threatened days of rage to coincide with the formula one grand prix. french candidates embraced euro skepticism to win hearts and minds ahead of a presidential poll which could reshape the news political landscape. chinatowns is growing much of its beijing's plan for the vast untapped resources and nations ordering the region. i'll be back with another summary in half an hour from now in the meantime the i do want to show discusses

a new drug policy that the cia is pushing for in yemen which may see people targeted even if their identity is not shown from washington next here on our. welcome to the little show we'll get the real headlines with none of the mersey who live in washington d.c. now tonight we're going to speak with michael hastings about the new drone policy of the cia is 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 so we have all of that and more for you tonight including those of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided to. well it's been a long week of scandals and historic moments for 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 khan 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 shuttle discovery being towed to which new home at the smithsonian's national air and space museum secret service agents plan to talk today with rocker ted nugent meeting fellows come 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 or how long 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 weekend i 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 or just the fact that we deem fifteen people out there on triable because we can't let the dare see a courtroom because we've done such bad things to that now you know that i can rant about that for days and days and days but this is another interesting development that applies from a different perspective but also to with a story of

a somber here an american citizen was visiting the west bank in one thousand nine hundred five and there he was arrested and tortured and ultimately killed by the p.l.o. so under a law called the torture victim protection act on the with 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 at this law can only apply to an individual and not to afford organization so basically his family can seek justice for his torture and ultimately his death that's really unfortunate and supreme court justice sonia sotomayor who wrote the majority opinion here of knowledge that 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 obscure to you but it is worth paying attention to you if there were more attention directed towards it and maybe congress would

actually rework this law maybe there would be more ways to seek justice for the victims of torture but 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 out already to expand yemen drone campaign that's right according 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 and these types of strikes are already employed in pakistan and the targets there have been funeral ceremonies the victims of 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 might be different but yes or no that 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 the push 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 that indicate that they're militants they don't know some of the

identities of everyone involved and then to launch a strike versus just targeting high value targets or particular individuals who they are specifically trying to kill now moving out 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've become among the pakistani people and i wouldn't be surprised if that's the same result in yemen but so i'm just curious then what the logic is behind and 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 that 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 and what the in they believe in there are people within the white house who believe this is well known in our security council that this is the most effective way to prevent terrorists from attacking the united states it's to have sort of a persistent constant. essentially artillery 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 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 wouldn't tell that means that we it's a more lethal policy and you know we care less about the casualties are going to be

well would you call that you know i care 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 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 this sort of attack so they believe that this is going to be the way to prevent future strikes now you know what the again 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 there but you have to remember there is zero political cost for the

administration to go along with this policy 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 wrote about this week in rolling stone two and it is this level fair that this in the restoration seems to have with the drone program cell taking all that into account what's your guess do you think the president is going to sign off on it this time i'm going to go ahead. i see the problem is once these leaks happen right then the president is 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 the set you're going to have all these leaks from the cia that 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 just 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 has a very specific reason that they're happening now let's talk about the fact that things like this can't lead to the washington post you know on one hand you have for example the a.c.l.u. which has been trying to submit for your requests to try to get information from the government especially when it came to the drone strike that took out on our lucky and their response was we can't confirm or deny the existence of our drone program and so we can't talk about it in court but why is it ok to leak things like this in the 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 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 it 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 means they get to control the narrative to get control the information in any requests that they don't want to deal with people like myself even 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 have to look at the way that people report on this too because if you look at this washington post piece it will try to claim that the obama administration so far has had a lot of constraints when it comes to its run program in yemen and they call the killing of anwar a lot he's 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 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 his grandfather his father what was his take. oh well he was certainly devastated by the loss of his son booker 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 and 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 it is 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 is the 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 he's a tribute the success of the program in iraq where we wiped out literally hundreds if not thousands of you know alleged insurgents and what not to him so clearly he was a rising star within the intelligence world he was very close to german mcchrystal window mcchrystal lost his job and went into sort of the wilderness for about you know a year and a half but now clearly he says enough juice and people think he's talented enough that they're putting him back in charge of this extremely vital and sensitive program he's back and then you know really quick before we go to say yes you know when 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 an 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 hasn't even carried on for more than one day why do you think that is. well look i 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 copple or 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's already running against the war sensually during his reelection campaign so you know people don't really want to pay attention to it will pay attention to when he gets shown flash in their faces like with the l a times story i would note that they only published two of eighteen 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 have to release those other sixteen photos well we'll see if they actually i'm

michael thanks so much for joining the e.u. i emailed them today and asked them to release those photos by the way so they have got back to me yet but i'll see if they do all publish them i will keep a lookout thanks for joining us. thank you. art it's time for for as break the evening but when we come back what are likely jackson the obama administration the son of an african leader and due process all have in common was taken to find out and then charles dickens might be dead but debtors prisons certainly aren't going to tell you about the increasing number of people being locked up in saddle but even more death after the break. the issue is that so much is riding on a road that you believe it was there's the taliban bad guy insane or is right wing fanatic this is what a norwegian court must determine in the wake of last year's massacre of seventy seven take.

down your social t.m.p. cation children from the one called touch from the q dumpster. geology life on the . video on demand. smiling. or a sense feed now in the palm of your. machine. the scuttle. the light will come down. so let's jewel choir's will be saying. well tonight we have

a glimmer of hope focusing around a glimmering that we spend a lot of time on the show it talking about i still mean seizures and it seems like the obama administration's montra when it comes to these. things that people seizing people's property is don't stop til you get enough remember the time that they accidently seize eighty four thousand web sites 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 the 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 broadsides but a different type of property you see back in october the obama administration sees about seventy one million dollars worth of assets from your doro gamma obeying main he is the son of the president of equitorial guinea and the obama administration says that the government. is rampant with corruption of people at the top

controlling seventy percent of the nation's wealth while the rest of the country lives in poverty now they claim of 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 dealings 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 of facts and make to what they claim are his connections to his home countries corruption bases his yachts cars jets and his mansion and that's not all they took also sees a white crystal covered glove worn by michael jackson during his world tour now apparently was 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've heard that michael jackson is. will go down in history as one of our greatest entertainers. i grew up on his music and still have. all the stuff from.

yeah he may have gone too soon but we all know his music is immortal we're on to you mr president anything to get your mitts on one of those coveted gloves you smooth criminal ever took the side of the government seizing people's assets without any proof of wrongdoing or charges being filed it's a laughing matter now luckily last week a california judge approved federal judge prove that the obama administration is not invincible would have ruled that the government's justification for the seizure is missing some elements that simply have got to be there now according to the judge the government must prove that may actually amassed his fortune illegally under equitorial guinea law now the judge's 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 they have the right to do it but the point is you need evidence before

you just see 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 the truth of of hope. well it's been over twenty years since the supreme court ruled that you can not imprison those that are too poor to pay their debts but doesn't mean 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 poor or the problem is only getting worse now as a 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 track in this visuals cycle the prison system but is it also more financial burden on the taxpayers that with alex to barak 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 you wrote about that stands out there what are these general criminal justice fees that are normally applied. it could range for everything so as soon as somebody is convicted they are charge a judgment fee their charge a transportation fee when they're put in a jail or charge a room and board fee to get out of jail you have to pay for probation once they're on probation and then on parole other 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 oh that last one right there seems. insane to me i think you mentioned the 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 it 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 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 not for any original crime but 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 but 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 somebody of that

crises their own 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 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 cox's and find these fees and probation and so forth aeration reason so forth and yet. you can't get blood from a stone and 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't 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 haven't paid for more people in jail instead of letting people out and actually earning some money oh let's talk about the ball and chain you know the mention of penalty keep getting called 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 or tatts does that affect your credit. it affects your credit rating it means this much harder to get a apartment 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 cumulate 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 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 he may be trying to pay off some of this ted he just ballooned and accumulates and crushes the. people even having so many of these fees and general i have because he wrote about it and he said a it's difficult to argue against these things for somebody that can afford it first and somebody who actually can some of these things are absolutely crazy to me for example the one about the public defender i don't think it should matter whether her rage or poor why should she have to pay for 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 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 deterrence 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 win a child or something wrong you want to give them a slap on the wrist a punishment put them into timeout and should don't hold it against them forever after they put in but after the child has been put into the timeout corner hudson 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 a slap me or whatever you want to get and 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 keeping them that route back to reintegrate and yet

still letting them out on the streets it doesn't make sense for anyone now it's definitely not the way that things were i thought thanks so much for joining us tonight. high five for another break but we come back we'll have a better thinking of a healing spell for you and then i'll be speaking with pakistani noir for drawing that sense was refused entry to the u.s. i'm awfully sorry. the.