welcome the alone a show where we get the real headlines with none of the mercy we're going live out of washington d.c. now tonight we're going to speak to whistleblower civil admin's she's going to tell us her story the resistance that she faced the intimidation and the silencing placed upon her by the government's state secrets privilege then twitter is fighting against the courts and in support of one of their users occupier who's cheats tweets are in question is going to join us to break down the whole story and tell us what it feels like to have a tech giant on his side or not all of that and more for tonight including a dose of happy hour but first let's take a look at the mainstream media decided to miss. now obviously there was quite the announcement made by the president today

regarding gay marriage so once that all happened all coverage immediately shifted to that story we're going to talk about it later on our show as well because it is a historic statement to be made by a sitting president but before that happened i was actually kind of surprised to see the mainstream media pay some attention to what was happening in charlotte north carolina today there bank of america was holding its annual shareholder meeting and as we discussed on yesterday's show protesters was planning to come out in large numbers and today they followed through. occupy bank of america protesters are outside the banks headquarters right now ninety nine percent they are back in a big way this time they're taking aim at bank of america the members of the so-called ninety nine percent power coalition they organize this event protesting the bank of america's actions in regard to foreclosures the support of the coal industry day one bank of america to cut principal payments on mortgages that are underwater two to three streets in foreclosure so the bank of america. it's about

a new policy that was qualified homeowners to reduce their loans shiling outside the bank of america's annual shareholders meeting this is in charlotte north carolina hundreds of people have gathered for a protest kind of an occupy type protest outside of a shareholders meeting for bank of america police they are surrounding the bank's headquarters and protesters say that the bank has also hired private security calling for a moratorium on foreclosures they're also carol calling for the c.e.o.'s pay package of bank of america to be voted down the he is expected to get seven million dollars. now like i said i was surprised that this got and me coverage from the cable network so at least it's a start but i do wish that the media would have gone more in depth for starters they didn't even bother to mention the city manager had decided to call this shareholder meeting an extraordinary event so that means that it applies under an ordinance was passed in january in charlotte and anticipation of protests coming at

the democratic national convention now what it does is it stifles free speech or gives police much more broad powers to search people's belongings arrest them for things as simple as having a scarf or a marker so calling the shareholder meeting extraordinary in that sense well that's just absolutely ludicrous why is this so special what's extraordinary is that we have ordinances like this being passed to actually criminalize free speech and you would think of the media might care about that one but. really they treat this as just another protest and if the already feel like clamping down on it so be it now let's disturbing to say the least but it's about much more than that it's also about what happened inside for starters shareholders did in fact vote yes on executive compensation for bank of america c.e.o. brian one hand they said yes on a seven million dollar pay package why they did that i don't know but i guess that puts a damper on what some thought might become a trend citigroup shareholders voted no on their c.e.o.'s compensation just a few weeks ago but aside from that. happened was that most shareholder resolutions

did not pass that includes the resolution that we discussed yesterday to bar the bag from using their treasury funds to donate to political causes all management proposals however they did pass and once again you have to talk about the structure the fact that even shareholders don't really have a say when their decisions are non binding just like the vote on pay in part thanks to doc frank and some shareholders were in fact not even let inside the meeting but there was plenty of anger from those who did get on the inside many shareholders to represent advocacy groups grilled bank of america on their foreclosure practices one asked what it would take for bank of america to start abiding by the law and treating their customers fairly but c.e.o. brian moynihan and i he didn't bother subjecting himself to the anger for too long he wrapped up the meeting after only a little more than two hours even though a lot of shareholders didn't get to air their grievances but the point is that people are angry they realize that these banks aren't being held accountable to the people that's the part that's actually extraordinary about all of this that it's

the big banks got bailed out that engaged in foreclosure fraud and engage in predatory payday lending than fight any regulation and still have not been held accountable for their role in bringing down the world economy there's nothing extraordinary about people being angry and using their constitutional rights to come out and protest and make their voices heard but obviously the city manager of charlotte didn't feel the same way and obviously the mainstream media doesn't feel the same way because they just look at this as just another protest without really getting into the grievances that these people have these shareholders actually have grievances that make a lot of sense and deserve to be reported on but that's the mainstream media decided to miss. well she's been called the most classified woman in u.s. history but now after a long battle with government secrecy the full story is finally been written so

belle edmonds took a job as a translator for the f.b.i. just five days after nine eleven and she was fired from the bureau in april of two thousand and two after raising suspicions one of the other translators in her section perhaps being a member of the american turkish council and this organization was under investigation for bribing senior government officials and members of congress drug trafficking illegal weapons sales money laundering and nuclear proliferation and every step of the way at this faced resistance not only internally at the f.b.i. but within congress remembers back down to pressure as well as within the courts were not once but twice the justice department used the state secrets privilege to silence her and even in trying to publish her book face a nearly year long f.b.i. campaign to prevent its publication so we finally get a chance to talk to the whistleblower about her story and the plight the dangers the intimidation campaigns toward others that are brave and brave enough to actually carry that title joining me tonight is to bill admin's editor of boiling frogs post and the founder director of the national security whistleblowers

coalition he's also author of the memoir classified woman a civil admin story thanks so much for joining us tonight thank you for having me on it ok so i tried to give a clearly a very sure it's summary here of what it was that happened to you but a lot of great for us tell us more about your story about what the information was that you tried to get out there and what happened along the way it took three hundred fifty two pages to do dad but the highlights of this story starts with the f.b.i. and i never look for a job with the f.b.i. they came and. actually they begged me to take this job right three days after nine eleven. because they were desperate for language specialists in critical languages such as farsi and turkish and thereby johnny and and the other turkey which is within central asia caucasus that are those various dialects that are spoken so i took the job as a contract linguist i started working for the f.b.i.

and immediately within the first few weeks i started discovering issues cases. now some of these are considered pure incompetence bureaucratic bungling others are far more aware far more serious because they were intentional what was what was probably some of the most damning evidence that you found out there that somebody might want suppressed well to give you some general ideas in one thousand nine hundred six the f.b.i. said these are various field offices not only where i work washington field office but f.b.i. chicago's field office and also another branch in new jersey they had a very important high level counterintelligence investigations of foreign entities for a military attaché some of them were just embassy diplomats but others were corporations businesses and as hard of this investigation that began in one nine

hundred ninety six they on covered of various high level several more than a dozen u.s. officials some of them elected in congress some of them within the state department some in pentagon and actually some in a place called rand corporation you may be familiar with them and the agents they wanted to do their job they wanted to transfer these cases and their evidence into criminal from counterintelligence and see the justice in terms of trying these people because the people engaged in these activities were not only foreign but u.s. officials but the justice department the f.b.i. . pressured by the state department by the white house at the time to to not transfer it and then in one thousand nine hundred ninety nine they were told to only pursue the congregational aspects because it's was leaving more towards republican than this is the clinton administration and then leave the ones that

were the individuals appointed by clinton ad of it and then george w. bush came into office he basically ordered the entire investigation all the files shut down so that's one the other one had to do because it's a pretty big on the right and that's something the nobody had known right something the really good idea doesn't report this for years mainstream media has been reporting this as they do with whistleblowers here is a poor petite poor was a lawyer who was fired she reported incompetence and nobody asked the questions within the mainstream media why the state secrets privilege she was only with them for six seven months she was only a language a special she was not a cia undercover agent they never asked why the justice department would issue a gag order on congress and in fact when i tried to tell the mainstream media they don't want to know about it why i'm curious about that too right so they didn't ask perhaps the important questions but how do you feel that you were portrayed you

know once you got fired once you became this essential enemy of the state because they did everything that they could to try to silence you and shut you up do you think that you get smeared that people start treating you differently well initially the story was leaked to the media this is two thousand and two in june to the associated press by the f.b.i. and in fact they made it that i was under investigation by the f.b.i. for espionage related activities and the media reported this then later on the congress these were senators at a time senator grassley and senator leahy they came out that they said no she's the one who reported all these wrongdoings and now we are investigating the f.b.i. i'm from that point on it was this. very shallow headlines of poor whistleblower being gagged poor was full glory being fired look what the little cute girl and basically get was it they just want to make whistleblowers some kind of aberration and they try to do the right thing but the government shut them down but they never

get to the issues what was he exposing why do you think that is the right because we've seen i think we've seen this on many levels right and we do a lot of coverage on whistleblowers on the show we've had many whistleblowers come on the program and they don't get invited on to other shows you know and part of this is nobody reports on the massive war that's been waged by the obama administration specifically by whistleblowers but it's also just seems like it's not an area of interest where you look at your look at get two different areas which end up being the same reason well with the mainstream media i guess by now everybody should know what it is that i mean here is the new york times whose job has to be in to sell government lies they sold us they tried to sell us the iraq war you know the weapons of mass destructions they have you know imbedded journalists with it with the executive branch so their case is pretty clear why it is because it's the corporate government media lucian in that case but one of my

very other very close to power is right so a lot of you seem to scared to lose that access and so they don't bother trying to barrister or hurt someone you're right and one thing that bothers me is like the had a little small case. in syria reporting and they had their reporters walk out they said to be feel like one sided reporting right so they had to reporters quit while we haven't been seeing that how many reporters have you know they have been laid off what if they had reporters coming out of the new york times and howling blowing the whistle and saying look this is how we are being prevented from reporting the truth you will see a different story now the other channel is. what is referred to as the so-called alternative channels these are i call them versus the true independent alternatives because when you look at some of the popular so-called alternatives what you see is you see the same corporates who have corporation who are you talking about of specifically if you want to talk about. alternatives ok well it is very easy to do

you put the top five popular i mean ok here is ok she says she has obama's cell phone and she's texting herit him regularly she's clearly partisan and she's not doing what she was doing and then she was bought out by a.o.l. you know how much independence the you expect from somebody you know on their huffington post the good thing is that you do you do see a lot of people criticizing them for that right and that's something that everyone is discussing all over the media and there is a lot of discussion on blogs on twitter when for example having to post as well but i want to just i want to get back to really quickly to more about your story specifically in terms of i'm curious as to why you from what i have from what i've read you decided to say yes to the f.b.i. when they came begging to you after nine eleven saying that we desperately need translators because you felt like it was your patriotic duty right you didn't want something like nine eleven to happen again but have you have your emotions changed

have your feelings changed after everything that you've been to over the last years . i woke up i was water the ninety five percent of naive americans up to up to what to my case to believe that we had this great democracy and we have this thing called constitution and the first amendment and there were things such as separation of powers that congress actually had the power of oversight and they could hold people within the executive branch accountable i believe those notions i have a master's degree in public policy and that's where they teach you and going through these cases not only with mine but also i have one hundred fifty national security also lawyers from the cia from the justice department from d.o.d. who have gone through similar experiences you find out that those things are basically in theory in the books i mean what you see for example gagging this book that says first amendment this conditional what was the reason what was the f.b.i.

has reason to try for a year to get you not to be able to publish this book or i often we hear classified information excuse what else because this book when people read this book they realize what has been going on in our nation they have been boiling down these cases to some suspected terrorist and here day have an american citizen someone who has never committed a crime someone who was given top secret clearance and someone who did the right thing and tried to do the right thing to defend the constitution and the public's right to know and this is what happens it's that and when they invoke this they secrets privilege this is the attorney general john ashcroft in two thousand choose october he underlined diplomatic sensitive diplomatic relations everything about this woman has to be classified and covered by this they secrets privilege because if this information comes out it's going to severely damage the united states

diplomatic relations and diplomatic relations and diplomatic standing on this is you know this is an argument that we've continued to hear it's not just the bush admin. astray should be obama administration is invoked state secrets many times and what i'm curious about is why you chose to start your own whistleblower organization there's a lot of whistleblower organizations out there who feel like they're not. doing the job properly so glad you asked that question because i was like many whistle floor this was out i felt so lonely out being fired i'm trying to go to congress so i saw on the internet they are these whistleblower organizations they say whistleblowers will provide them good legal advice all these things and we help them investigate i contacted every single one of them not once not twice ten times they never responded to me once i became high profile there they were they came to me because they couldn't share me they wanted to say it was their organization who was taking the credit for what i had done even though they never help then i started meeting

again hundreds whistleblowers from these agencies and they all had similar experiences they have never gotten any response even a call back from these organizations then i started looking into them they were getting three four million dollars each one of them from b. corporations they're there because foundations george soros rockefeller and what they have been doing for twenty years they have been doing that dance with the government they have been engaged in tango and they are being exists there in name only manufacturing consent and giving this illusion that organizations such as project on government oversight they are out there looking out for the welfare whistleblowers while none of these whistleblowers were helped with the so we decided to have our holes without the. strong statement definitely there to make you know i wonder how they feel about that too but there definitely are whistleblowers out there that need to get their story told and you know you definitely are a high profile case now right most classified woman in u.s.

history some like to call you bill thank you so much for joining us i know you're having me thank you. are we taking a quick break but when we come back. the feds are trying their hands trying to get their hands out a twitter user of personal information trying to get their hands on i bet but i'm sorry without award again but the tech giant is fighting back and then we're going to speak to an entrepreneur wall street supporter who's actually at the heart of that latest kids. would be soon which brightened a few. songs from funds to pressure. stunts

on t.v. don't come. close to the. science technology innovation. developments around russia we've got the future covered. this week we saw twitter do something that we don't often see tech companies do they decided to fight the court on behalf of one of their users now the user in question is malcolm harris he was one of hundreds of people who were arrested on the brooklyn bridge during an occupy wall street march last october now many of the protesters arrested decided to make deals with the prosecution but not harris who issued a plea of not guilty then the prosecution decided that in order to make a case against harris they would need his tweets from the time surrounding that march so they sent a subpoena to twitter asking for all of harris's tweets from mid september two thousand and eleven through the new here and we're getting to the latest details in

harris's case in just a second but to fully understand the elements of play here you've got to take a quick stroll down twitter's subpoena history because this is far from the first time that twitter has actually taken a stand for its users so back in may of two thousand and ten pennsylvania attorney general tom corbett wanted to know the names of two anonymous twitter users who let's just say weren't his biggest fans of course but had a grand jury subpoena twitter for the user's real identities and twitter fought that court order coming to the to the defense of their users then in december that same year twitter received another subpoena this time it was the u.s. government looking for the personal information including addresses of users like apple bob bradley manning and julian assange and the subpoena came with a gag order that prevented twitter from notifying the users in question but a month later in january two thousand and eleven twitter won a fight to have that subpoena unsealed so that they could notify the users so that the users could actually challenge the release of their personal information in court now let's fast forward to twenty twelfth as i told you earlier malcolm harris

has decided to fight his disorderly conduct charge in court and the prosecution has issued a subpoena to twitter for his tweets now twitter and for malcolm of the subpoena and what it's become business as usual malcolm is lawyers are fighting the release but last month a judge ruled that malcolm could not fight that subpoena because it wasn't issued to him but to. twitter so now we get to the landmark moment yesterday it was announced that twitter would be fighting the release of malcolm's tweets they're going to court to fight for malcolm's right to defend his own privacy and its statement then lead twitter's legal counsel said twitter's terms of service make absolutely clear that its users own their content our filing with the court reaffirms our steadfast commitment to defending those rights for our users but it's obviously not practical for every company to go out to court to protect every single user the government wants to get information on so we have to ask what this really means for the future of privacy the internet and the way the prosecution handles technology joining me to discuss is malcolm harris senior editor of the new

inquiry malcolm thanks for joining us tonight and i guess first starters you know how does it feel to have a big tech giant defending you. well certainly makes you feel a little safer than it did when the. earlier in the preceding i guess you had to wait to see you know the first reading where before stepping in but it's very sad that. right there i do wish that you know that more big companies out there were to do this because you know if the trend says anything it seems like people like yourself are often. left with no tools when it comes to trying to fight orders like this fight subpoenas like this in court so is it going to be up to the twitters the googles of the world. yeah in a lot of ways i mean if this had been another social media seriously there's a good chance i never would have heard about this funeral until they started reading my tweets a lot of the court. if it had been facebook or grew i don't know how it would have

gone. luckily twitter has been a little more dependable network based in this here. but that of course like i just said you know if this is something that becomes the norm of the tech giants are going to start going out and defending every single one of their users so ultimately what is it these think needs to happen that needs to change you know one of the arguments that the judge makes here is that this isn't a violation of your privacy because it's out there it's on the internet that you this isn't your personal private home you know how you don't have a home online but you know what's your take well i'm not a neither a lawyer nor a judge but i think the brief that twitter's counsel filed makes a very strong argument if the judge is earlier ruling in. is not the way that the law should stand then they would present a really impossible burden on them as a company if other companies face a suit similar situation where they have to answer every subpoena it seems they're

either going to take to twitter and argue that the user should be able to challenge themselves or just comply with every subpoena without worrying about it which i think is a really dangerous situation to users. why you think that they're really going after you and spending so much time doing this in this case right obviously hundreds of other people were arrested that day in brooklyn on that parade they said yes and you know and took a deal but you said no but they're spending a lot of time just trying to get your tweets do you think that there's some intimidation factor involved. well i really can't speculate as to the motives of the manhattan district attorney's office. it's hard to know what's going on in their heads but it seems to me that this is. an attempt to set a precedent. for the kind of policing of political activist united states we're

going to see in the coming months and years so this is going to be a real test case and i'm glad it's here in the way it is right now we i mean what do you know what do you think in terms of the direction that it's heading when it comes to our ability to go out and protest here in this country right not only have we really seen a massive clampdown by police when it comes to the occupy movement the last six months but just at the top of the show i was talking about this ordinance that was passed in north carolina preparing for the d.n.c. where suddenly having a marker or something that can get you arrested yeah i think in the united states we're going to see. the policing of anti-capitalist protesters go the way we've already seen it in england. where social media has played a role where if you push the wrong thing on your facebook about what you did the other day you might end up in jail for a year and i think we've already started to see that we saw that in cleveland at the f.b.i. in manufacturing a bomb plot against so-called anarchists and these

a surtax the used against to manufacture terror plots in the past and i think we're going to see more or more of. this sort of occupy sequence heats up but do you think that at least you know people might be able to arts outsmart the author already in a certain sense you know i enjoyed the fact that twitter did argue in court that it could have saved everyone a lot of time and a lot of money if they would have just downloaded their saved or tweets originally before it became too late to find them online. yeah you know i think we definitely have a knowledge advantage when it comes to understanding how these technologies work. you can tell from the prosecutor's filings and the positions they've taken to use case there's not a real strong understanding to the d.a.'s office of how twitter actually works they compared it to the bank records and if i look at account holder in a bank i can go in and just change all my account details which i mean if you do your twitter so i think we'll do it step on them in that where now i think that's

something we're seeing not only in the courts but in congress too when it comes to certain legislation that deals with new technologies but not them thanks for joining us and i will definitely be following your case thanks. i thought it comes and i have another edition of insight as i've read it and it looks like one state is having a change of heart when it comes to the public domain early spring explained why that's our glimmer of hope on return.

from our studios here. top stories now dozens are killed and hundreds injured in the syrian capital. the deadliest attack since the conflict in the country in the year ago. the u.n. observer mission. only a few hundred meters separate rescue teams from the crash site of a russian. as authorities say it's unlikely any survivors will be found the plane crashed into the side of a mountain on wednesday with forty five people. sorry i'm just too busy.