welcome to the lower show where we get the real headlines with none of the mercy can live in washington d.c. now tonight we're going to have our monday hangover panel and we'll talk about one year since osama bin laden's death what documents are and are not leaked and i'll ask why bragging about who you killed as a campaign strategy then tomorrow is mayday tomorrow's also a big day of action for occupies they call for a general strikes we're going to catch up with john neville to find out what we can expect and thanks to a war of words between google and the f.c.c. we now know that google knew that they were collecting your data via their street you project one of them being punished for it or have all of that and more for you tonight including a dose of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media decided to miss.

right so the entire d.c. press corps was getting wasted schmoozing with celebrities in high ranking government officials and other journalists all weekend long here in washington so if they the mainstream media decided to fill some air time reminiscing and replaying all be hilarious jokes that were made and what they like to call the nerd prom. president the first lady joined our nation's journalists long celebrities athletes politicians newsmakers to poke a little fun at themselves it is the annual white house correspondents' association dinner where you take hollywood glamour you mix it with washington power and that's the white house correspondents dinner in a nutshell in a white house correspondents' dinner hosted this year by jimmy kimmel it's the ultimate section of journalism politics oh and celebrity this is the one night the white house correspondents dinner that we don't make an issue of the president being a jokester making cracks this is the night that you're supposed to have comic tell you what you deliver plenty of zingers directed at. who's who of washington and

hollywood in the audience it's one of the few nights of the year when washington gets to be fully and they get to do it on purpose it's great to be in the magnificent building. or. mitt romney would call a little fixer upper the press things off limits politicians nothing is off this is an annual weekend of parties that some of us know mockingly called the season nerd prom this year it was hosted by comedian jimmy kimmel is affectionately nicknamed the nerd prom. now there is an entire discussion to be had about this event how it perfectly represents our completely impotent press and by that i mean this one weekend is the perfect convergence of power and those who love it those are drawn to it those who let's face it admire it if you had a press corps that actually wanted to be a government watchdog have an adversarial relationship with the all too powerful elites that they're supposed to expose when quite simply they will spend tons of

money to go rub elbows get drunk introduce their significant others and take pictures with the very people they're supposed to be watching year in and year out and let's face it it's also probably the only chance of the nerdy wants here in d.c. you're going to get when it comes to meeting fled like charlie's their own or can car dash in and yes can car dashi and was actually there but while the mainstream media spend the day reminiscing it let me highlight something else that happened here in washington this weekend while the president was telling jokes about mitt romney jokes about eating dog human rights activists lawyers even some journalists the rare kind that used to report on the atrocities committed in the name of the war on terror well they got into the first international drone summit so here was a meeting of minds actually want to discuss the damage that's been done the questions that have been raised by a counterterrorism policy that focuses on killing rather than capturing and killing from afar with the push of a button at that so here people actually spoke about the civilian victims of drone strikes the innocent people who have died. because the government doesn't like to

talk about it because the cia doesn't even acknowledge that a drone program exists except of course when it's an official who gives off the record information about it to the journalist will say nice things about it who they just partied side by side with this past weekend there were a lot of speakers including some of our guests clive stafford smith who was on the show on friday as akbar the pakistani attorney who represents victims of drone strikes who finally was given a visa and jeremy scahill one of the few reporters that's actually gone to get me gone to somalia to see what the situation is like from the ground of our shadow wars and here's just a little bit of what he had to say. real. world. this is. the sort of with health care president obama was one of those already. so. you know this is an already this is a vast majority that drove world war i know this is. oh yeah this

is a government that's killed us citizens via drone strike without any due process that little detail that a press corps that a government watchdog would be outraged and can fleetly disturbed by but it's so much more fun to just ignore that right to get to keep parting with government officials and celebs and so that's of the mainstream media chooses to miss. right so it's only monday but there is a lot to talk about because the news does not stop over the weekend even though the entire press corps did nothing but party at events surrounding the white house correspondents dinner now we've got quite a bit to discuss today the white house is all about pimping the one year anniversary since the raid in pakistan where they say they killed osama bin laden not only becoming a campaign tactic with videos including former president bill clinton taking part to jab at romney asking if he would have been able to make that call the press has

also taken part quite a few reviews of obama's military prowess out there and leaks of documents from osama bin laden's compound in a bought about now all in all there is quite a bit of political ego stroking and celebrating going on out there but is that justified or monday hangover panel is here to hash it all out. joining me is michael hastings rolling stone contributing editor and author of the book the operators and retired lieutenant colonel anthony shaffer senior national security adviser with the task force on national and homeland security and author of the book operation dark heart gentlemen thank you for joining me tonight ok so when i said that the white house is really pimping this we. have a lot of thing i mean it and like us of even have former president bill clinton taking part and i want to show you a little clip of this ad that they put out there that is it's generating

a lot of discussion and specifically they try to highlight the differences that would be i guess you could say between obama and mitt romney. it's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person he was referring to the hunt for osama bin ladin when he beamed by that because it's generated a little controversy given osama bin laden's role in chilling with three thousand americans on nine eleven. he had to listen. that's what you are president to do. you harm the president to make the calls when no one else can do. what do you think of this as a campaign strategy and says i'm the guy that killed that guy first as a member of the press corps who spent the weekend partying with celebrity general allen and then totally being a walking representation of what's wrong with washington d.c.

i'll say i am hung over and i'm happy to talk about this look i think the deal bomb campaign thinks this is a win win when you know if if even if they want to if they want to debate about. that debate whether it's now or in the fall i think there is a worry that they're going to overplay it and politicize it too much and you could see it seeing a backlash with that i spent today contacting a lot of navy seals and already within that special forces community there is some sort of anger might be too strong a word but certainly a muse mint and a little bit of an irritant that it's been so politicized is that something that works with american people though i mean if you if you glorify killing i get it right and some of bin ladin you can say is the number one has any but you're going to clarify and you're going to you're going to find this hard to believe i'm actually agreeing with the president regarding his comments regarding regarding mitt romney he would not have made the call to kill him he would have made the call to capture him now and this is why we will get into the well let me hit this real hard look at bottom line is we are getting too far afield of just killing people

because we don't like them frankly i'm going to tell you the softer i don't like preserving people naturally because i'm a good guy because they if they are alive they talk to me they're. two chapters devoted to my book of breaking an opera a guy that we knew was a brother of an operator from iran so we got into the witness of a bit dead men tell no tales so i think obama agrees michael completely here i think they are the verge of overplaying their hand on this because a lot of folks are critical of the fact the president may have made the call but planning was in place for years a dark heart was the format of the operation used for the right so it's not like we didn't plan this before so you've got to be very careful in american people see through it pretty quick if you maintain it too long i just wonder you know i feel like you probably have to be careful about making these coming up with these hypotheticals right the three am phone call we saw that with hillary clinton and so here you have this hypothetical directed at mitt romney would have been able to make the call well i don't know where this is the kind of stuff that i feel like pressure as politicians into not wanting to be look soft on terror so maybe it pushes them into making rash decisions that they should necessarily be making but

this is why this is an issue that democrats and progressives physically love because they can finally say look we are tough and they can say look we play hardball they go look george w. bush exploded on eleven for eight years hammering it again again again for political purposes and now the democrats can do that in a similar way because at least it's a positive in sort of killing rather than a negative having really sold on you but i think i think they're going to stick with it and keep hammering it home but again i think there is a chance for this for them to be sort of swift boated on this if the right things align and you know navy seals start coming out and saying no that you know they shouldn't have done this they shouldn't be talking about in this way they've given up too much intelligence about how we do operations already i heard a criticism today which has been out there that even announcing the bin laden raid as they did for macs and political impact on the intelligence side and then i can talk talk more about that when we were living let me interrupt you for one minute because one of the things we're finding out now is they're going to start selectively leaking certain documents that were found in the compound that belong

to us on the lot of but to me this is the epitome of selective leaking right you have the white house that doesn't want to give up any of the photos you have of federal judges. ruled in agreements with them last week and then you find out that they're going to leave documents that show that was some of the lot and had concerns because they felt that al qaida was kind of on the outs and was losing i mean that's like perfect propaganda. that's the point they're trying to play this is propaganda and so you know you have you know now and let's look at what they did they didn't want to tom drake for the n.s.a. whistle blowing but at the same time if you look at those wars the woodward book the first three chapters are all classified codeword stuff so there's a selective process here going on so they will manipulate things i suppose supported judicial watch on their suit regarding the photos i mean you know one day the state department saying the war on terror is over the next day you say they're trying to deny access to the most transparent administration in history according to their own so you really are seeing them speak out of both sides of the mouth what i think is most uncomfortable here though is a president for all intents and purposes from what i've told talked to by the

insiders was really not engaged in making the call this was not an eisenhower moment where you know gentlemen i'm going to make the call we go it was kind of like hey let's get him off the golf course let him know that you're helicopters are on the way realize that i mean that's clearly if you're going to i mean what i didn't is going to put out a different from what time is putting out there right which is that it was the president that went against joe biden that went against everyone else with that's why i've sort of what i did as they called it only this of swift boat like situation where in two thousand and four the democrats put up kerry's a military vietnam record sort of heroic thing and then it sort of started rather once you had a few voices start saying there's this alternative narrative out there you know the question is that going to stick and i don't know i mean if more more things they can save are talking about come out i mean you could see them having to having to sort of defend their initial statements some of the initial statements were wrong about it's so you can see them circling with these some of these threads. ari i want to move on really quickly to in terms of just asking overall so it's going to

be one year since osama bin laden has been killed what's changed is the world a better place a safer place a more dangerous place on one hand you have officials. claiming that at this point the core of al qaeda those people that actually were involved in attacking us on nine eleven are essentially gone but now you have all of their options to worry about why do they have offshoots why it's all caught on the arabian peninsula becoming stronger i think it's a safer place in the sense that there is now political breathing room to kind of start putting the genie back in the bottle of what's been unleashed of the war on terror whether or not that opportunity actually taking as we've seen actually with an expansion of the you know if you want to talk to a drone right you know releasing it and then had afghanistan a way that i don't think we could have done or the president couldn't have done before the bin laden killing i think for the american psyche was an important moment despite all the sort of flight i'm going object not what american psyche i'm not talking of politically realistically what's happening has i have our policies only made it worse right we're still continuing john strikes in pakistan despite

the fact that the parliament voted and said we don't want you to conduct drone strikes anymore and they just hit a school where we don't know exactly who was killed they say it was three militants this past weekend they also have the cia's expanded drone strike program in yemen that we found out was approved last week well how do you figure that with osama bin laden's death well first off osama bin laden's death through a signal or departs from afghanistan's like see it we're doing frankly we've engaged the afghan taliban for no good reason they are now a resistance movement now and we're we're the ones in the middle of the karzai government was corrupt and the taliban who are not corrupt but clearly have visions of coming back in and being supported by the pakistanis with that said the key has always been pakistan we continue to pretend otherwise but the pakistanis are the key they have nuclear weapons are the ones who have been supporting the taliban they've given the quetta shura or the mole more. conny network these are all networks we use during the soviet occupation against the soviets so we're we're not actually addressing the real issues and frankly this drone strike stuff is just

going to continue to create the next generation of terrorists because for every one you kill brought in finally admitted that yes we're killing civilians to we've known this germany has gone in there and found the sound from so. and we're pretending to not know this and yet it's going to cause trouble down the road for you as you're saying does it does it make a difference that he's dead or not would you i mean if you was alive that would necessarily be good for us foreign policy and for america i don't think either so but if i think it was supposed to be such a milestone good way to get things that they really were responsible for the largest terrorist second american soil that set our entire country off on this horrible decade of war destruction and waste and by killing him at least killing him that we can kind of step with that are we doing it at a rate that i would like are we doing it it really is going to what i want to get is that i don't really think that we're stepping away from it you know obviously it's going to be a huge thing if we wrap up a ten year long war in afghanistan we're not really stepping away from it and you might as well because you believe in. very good operations i want to talk about drone strikes though really quick and sort of things that are being said about that

so you have john brennan giving a speech today where he said that our drone strike program is why it's just that it's ethical think a lot of people at the drone summit here this weekend have actually spoken to victims would disagree then you have jose rodriguez who this was the guy that was responsible for actually destroying cia interrogation tapes despite the fact that a federal judge ruled that they had to be turned over now he has a book that's coming out and he was just on sixty minutes this last weekend still supporting and totally saying torture is good and that's what we were supposed to do but he had this to say about obama's policy take a listen. we don't capture anybody anymore leslie you know they're the fault of these ministration is has been to kill all prisoners no prisoners the drones the drones how could it be more ethical to kill people rather than capture them up never understood that one. so he says it's more of

a goal to capture rather than it is to just just kill people this is a line that we've also seen. the former head of the former top lawyer at cia say we've seen david ignatius kind of sort of subtly points out and some is columns which is that in fact all this debate over enhanced interrogation extraordinary rendition is completely overshadowed by the fact that now we're actually it's nasa meeting people and there's not the outcry from the left or the progressive this is all you know your progressive audience they are the people who should be actually who this criticism is directed at it's to get the left to shut up about this stuff and i don't believe in enhanced interrogation i don't believe it works i agree with the cia idea that no major event was ever prevented by this with that said i think having someone in custody pulling information out of them is far more important and really instructive in telling them i mean the ultimate deprival the depravity of your civil rights is proof i would say it was here is that so. there's no

equivalency going here and yeah well here it is right there that's right there you go so but but but that's the issue here that really are we taking the moral high ground which i you know i'm a conservative i think we ought to be taking the moral high ground here because we can't win legitimate capture because we could we should do the difficult things as candy said because you know they're easy because they are hard and this is where we have to be taking the higher ground and i'm appalled the left is not actually trying to hold its own values up and against its own president and and paul that you know that brennan to his nomination to the post was controversial because of his involvement enhanced interrogation he's put his foot in his mouth on the bin laden thing he came out and said oh there was this firefight he said on drones he also had said oh there's like zero civilian casualties in the last two years some like that so that you know brennan has been the sort of controversial figure it's someone that you know probably there's an argument to me that people do make that he should even have the job to begin with and now they're now they're sort of pushing you know this the drone drone war is going to work and we'll see what the blowback is on that in five years and is not qualified to hold the office he does

and he and general clapper should be gone if this is the best president obama can have regarding advisers that we are truly. in bad shape and this is going to get worse brennan does not know what he's doing that the missteps you see in the press are probably even worse behind the scenes of people who you don't want to talk to about well yeah i mean and the press is obviously i think a very big part of this too which is that the in the last week i feel like every single day i pointed out something that was just so blatant and so obvious when it comes to selective leaking who you want to give certain information to when you can't get over your progress real progress also last thing i want to bring up to is the three of us have discussed afghanistan and all the things that are going wrong there are so many times but new reports coming out today to about one hundred billion dollars in reconstruction efforts that are going nowhere also new reports that. shooting the deaths for the killings of u.s. forces by afghan troops are being completely hidden they're not actually telling

people the whole truth and the real truth about it was that the military would cover up the fact that their premier program which is train the afghan forces actually a complete debacle i've been reporting on this for for literally years now because a similar thing happened in iraq but not on the same level the fact that the training program is in such a state of disarray in the level of trust for the american afghan forces is nonexistent you know i mean we have i think it's only twenty thirty percent of the american casualties in the past few years has been from the sort of friendly incidents and again we saw today not only is it worse than it's worse than we even imagined and danny davis said this too i'm friends with danny and full disclosure but danny's been telling the truth about what's going on and michael reported on some of the manipulation going on all back to lieutenant colonel home saying i don't know lieutenant colonel holmes i've met with them i i trust that the reporting was stellar on what that said there are reasons why do you do continues to put this myth out there we're making progress because they've invested in this all these generals to include patrice now as put his brand on this so any admission

of failure during a political year especially will look bad for the administration and they're not the only ones that invested in it right i think that a lot of people have said to hear something like that when it's our blood our money that's going. and they just want to save face in the new obama today. sort of called for they listed all the president's foreign policy goals friends do you know the one that was missing afghanistan they did not mention afghanistan and i think we've gone to the point where nobody is going to call it any kind of accomplishment i got to wrap it up guys but thank you so much for joining me tonight thank you. all right. up next after the break tomorrow is may day and the occupy movement has big plans for the details since the back. room.

is there life. well there are big plans for tomorrow around the country not only is it may day which despite its us origins has become a workers' holiday basically everywhere else but occupy is also planning a massive general strike and it's not a general strike in the true sense of the word but there are actions planned and

more than one hundred fifty cities the call coming from occupy is no work no school no housework no shopping take the streets so what should we expect and what will this test. say for occupies relevance well joining me from our studio in new york is john nestle co-host radio dispatch and freelance writer john thanks for coming back on the show and wall said i know there's a lot of stuff going on tomorrow right more than one hundred fifty cities but what to you really stands out that we should you know that we should know about that's going to happen tomorrow. it's great to be back here well tomorrow i think is notable for a lot of reasons both for what's planned and what's not planned i think that even the sort of most core organizers are curious to see what tomorrow's going to look like i think that's part of the kind of joy of it is the spontaneity and the just unpredictability of calling for a general strike in the united states we have no idea what it's actually going to look like but as far as what's planned the day in new york starts eight am in

bryant park with break off marches called ninety nine the picket lines you can find more information ninety nine picket lines dot tumblr dot com and labor groups are going to march to different organizations firms that they have that they take issue with and there's going to be a march from union from bryant park down to union square and then the really huge event of the day is going to be the union march from the union square down to the building in the financial district and that's going to be led by the taxi workers on so that's a permitted march and broadway is going to be completely shut down the march is going to go curb to curb and it's going to be led by by taxis so i think that that's really going to be the massive massive action and that starts at five thirty

well let me you know you mentioned of course that that is a permit id march so let's talk about this because i know that if you look at the web sites to you in terms of what's going on people will tell you what are high risk events what are low risk advance in terms of what the reaction might be from police and so what are you hearing right is a lot of that's going to depend on how law enforcement actually reacts to it there's this weird thing surrounding the anniversary of the law to death to in the sense that the justice department homeland security and the f.b.i. have said there is a heightened terror threat in new york and i wonder if that conveniently is going to work to try to suppress some of these protests as well. yeah i think that as far as the higher risk actions versus the sort of more inclusive actions are you know there i think that there are going to be significant changes and i know that a lot of the organizers have worked with union leaders and especially with immigrant

rights groups who have actually been organizing around made a far more recently than than other groups in in america and so for those groups that are. not able to be arrested or they may have more precarious documentation standing or what have you i think that organizers are really doing their best to respect the wishes of those those groups and really not escalate any anything in those areas as for other marches sort of more autonomous actions that are going to probably be slightly slightly higher risk for i think that is going to be it's just going to be a matter of wait and see how the n.y.p.d. responds we're certainly. i think that people are prepared to see a very very harsh police crackdown certainly very early in the morning like we've seen in other days sometimes you'll see preemptive arrests various high profile

occupiers getting arrested even in the limo driver for one moment there john told you where i now like you said we've seen some high profile arrests and seen a lot of excessive use of force. by many when it comes from the police and so there's actually a law suit against the n.y.p.d. and valving their tactics and i know that you have something to do with it so if you could quickly tell us about that. yes so i'm a plaintiff in a case that was just filed today it's a federal lawsuit against the n.y.p.d. the name of the case is rodriguez v when ski and that of course is in reference. to eat down is rodriguez who is an elected official a city can. it's a member in new york it's the plaintiffs are him and three other elected officials and myself and five other members of the press who have been barred from doing their job and being able to to witness arrests or allowed to

participate in peaceably assemble so that lawsuit actually seeks to create a new oversight independent body or position to oversee the n.y.p.d. and the lawyers the three lawyers who filed it argue that the n.y.p.d. has actually become so lawless and out of control that it's incapable of policing itself and there has to be a separate federal level entity to make sure that they are acting appropriately will definitely be keeping an eye on that john thanks so much for joining us tonight. absolutely. just ahead you thought i read it on the collar is going to be on about silicon valley increasingly cozy relationship regulators. i.

five thirty am in moscow these here are t. headlines deadly terror attacks in the syrian city of evil lead killed nine and injured dozens more this is the u.n. warns it's powerless to implement a peace plan unless both sides lay down their weapons both the government and the opposition and blame each other for the bombings. political pressure on ukraine growing over the treatment of former prime minister yulia timoshenko with the e.u. politicians threatening to boycott the euro two thousand and twelve football games she says she was assaulted by guards in a prison where she's serving a seven year term for abuse of power brussels says the case is politically motivated. wiki leaks founder prepares to take center stage again is those to the art.