missions. welcome to the loner show where we get the real headlines with none of the mersey 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. the ride so the entire d.c. press corps was getting wasted schmoozing with celebrities and high ranking government officials and other journalists all weekend long here in washington so they the mainstream media decided to fill some air time reminiscing and replaying all of the 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 timing you delivered plenty of zingers directed at a 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 funny and they get to do it on purpose it's great to be here in the vast magnificent hilton. or what 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 wouldn't 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. are going to get when it comes to meeting flabby like charlie's their own or can car dash and yes can car dash in it 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. counterterrorism policy that focuses on killing

rather than capturing and killing from afar with the push of a button is that we hear people actually spoke about the civilian victims of drone strikes the innocent people who have died who the government doesn't like to talk about 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 and there were a lot of speakers including some of our guests clive stafford smith who was on the show on friday which is 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 the situation is like from the ground of our shadow wars and here's just a little bit of what he had to say. the real. world. says . we're going to talk about this with president obama's quote it's already

a secret that. you know this is and already this is the best authority to rome world war i don't know if 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 of the government watchdog would be outraged and can fleetly disturbed by it but it's so much more fun to just ignore that right to get to keep partying with government officials and celebs and so that's what 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 in jab at romney asking if he would have been able to make that call the press is also taking part quite a few reviews of obama's military prowess out there and leaks of documents from osama bin laden's compound and 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 with some of the 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 killing what three thousand americans on nine eleven. he had to decide. that's what you are president to do. you harm the president to make the calls when no one else can do. when 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 celebrities that is an alibi and 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 look the deal bomb campaign thinks this is a win win win you know if if even if they want to if they want to debate about osama bin laden 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 in me 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 out of it well let me get 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 a softer i don't like preserving people necessarily because i'm a good guy because they if they are alive they talk to me other. 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 wood and saw that dead men tell no tales so i think obama agrees michael completely 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 rate 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 had 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 pressures politicians and to 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 specifically 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 again i think like there is a chance for the 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 you know 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 a federal judge. that ruled in agreements with them last week and then you find out that they're going to leave documents that show that osama bin ladin had concerns because he felt that al qaida with 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 i know you have you know must look at what they did they didn't want to tom drake for the n.s.a. whistle blowing but at the same time because 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's 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 your helicopters are on the way i mean that cliff you are and 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 who that's why i'm 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 the military vietnam record sort of heroic thing and then it sort of started a rather once you had a few voices start saying there is this alternative narrative out there now the question is that going to stick and i don't know i mean if more more things they can save us 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 itso you can see them separately with these some of these threads. all right 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 offshoots to worry about why do they have offshoots why is all caught on the arabian peninsula becoming stronger i think it's a safer place in the sense that there's no 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 taken as we've seen actually with an expansion of the you know if you want to talk to a drone right he really didn't want 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 what i'm going to talk about the american psyche and i talk about politically realistically what's happening has i have our policies only made it worse right we're still continuing drone 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 we 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 is that well first off osama bin laden's death to signal our departure from afghanistan is like see it we're done 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 is 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 used 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 brennen 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 in my course 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 u.s. foreign policy and from our head don't think either so but if i think you have a supposed to be such a milestone good right that i want to get in and what it is that you know he was responsible for the largest terrorist i can 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 that that we can kind of step with that are we doing it at a rate that i would like are we doing it right there because what i want to get into 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 wrapped 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 you know and i believe that operations i want to talk about drone strikes though really quick answers are things that are being said about them so you have john brennan giving a speech today where he said that our drone strike program is why that 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 to listen. we don't capture anybody anymore leslie you know they are the fault of this ministration has

has been to kill prisoners take no prisoners the drones the drones how could it be more ethical to kill people rather than capture them i've never understood that one. so he says it's more ethical to capture revenue this is just just kill people this is a line that we've also seen the former head of the former top lawyers say we've seen david ignatius kind of sort of subtly points and in 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 or 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 i.g. 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 than killing 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 you always hear again here and there you go so but but but that's the issue here 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 larger than capture because we could we should do the defect. things can be said because you know they're easy because they are hard and this is where we have to be taking the higher ground i'm appalled the left is not trying to hold its own values up and against its own president and paul that you know brennan to his nomination to the post is controversial because of his involvement enhanced interrogation he 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 you know brennan has been this 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 judge to begin with and now there's now there's sort of pushing you know this oh drone drone war is going to work and we'll see what the blowback is on that in five years and it 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 advisors that we are truly in bad shape and this is going to get worse burning 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 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 not 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 in reports

that. shooting the deaths or the killings of u.s. forces by afghan troops are being completely hidden and they're not actually telling people the whole truth and the real truth about it 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. program is in such a state of disarray and the level of trust in american afghan forces is nonexistent you know i mean we have i think like some like 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. with 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 petraeus now it's 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 of the of sad to hear something like that when it's our blood our money that's going into it and they just want to say faith in the new obama today. sort of called for they listed all the president's foreign policy 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 and i thank you. all right . up next after the break tomorrow is may day on the occupy movement has big plans for like the details to come back. story. you understand it and the. other part of it

and realize that everything. is a big. blow to the capital account mr. buck and they alone are so they'll get the real headline with none of them are the problem with the mainstream media today is that they're completely disconnected

from the viewers and 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 in 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. well there are big plans for tomorrow around the country that only that may day

which despite its u.s. 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 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 in our right more than one hundred fifty cities but what do 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 and i think that 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 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 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 of 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 a lot of these death to the sense that the justice department homeland security and the f.b.i. have said there's 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. 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 that union leaders and especially with immigrant rights groups who have actually been organizing around made a far more recently than other groups in in america and so for those groups that are. not able to be arrested or the they 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 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 or you know whether i know like you said right we've seen some high profile arrests you've seen a lot of excessive use of force. by many standards 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 wind ski and that of course is in reference. to this rodriguez who is an elected official a city council 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 an independent body or position to oversee the n.y.p.d. and the lawyers the three lawyers who file that 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. i just had read it on the collins going to be on about silicon valley increasingly cozy relationship got that right there.