today on our team american drone strike again ok his number two was killed by a drone yesterday and what is being touted as a major blow to the organization but have we heard this story before coming up will tell you while kate has resilience outlast america's air power. while most people can be swayed by a constant barrage of misinformation and that's what's happening with this thirty five million dollars buyout of state money well it's hangover day in wisconsin and union leaders and state democrats are licking their wounds after embarrassing loss and a historic recall vote will bring you an update from the ground of the state we all know the u.s. can be a little hollow it times but when it comes to cyber security it's downright hypocritical on one hand congress is ramping up the need for internet protection

bills and on the other the obama administration is secretly attacking foreign governments using the resources it says it's so afraid of so with this can of cyber worms open is this the next platform for war. it's wednesday june sixth four pm in washington d.c. i'm abbie martin and you're watching our team. well the number two al qaeda leader has been declared killed by a drone strike on the pakistani border according to government officials under obama cia drone strikes they've killed fifteen of the most important players in al-qaeda while bush killed sixteen since nine eleven problem is the threat of al qaeda seems to be ever expanding after nine eleven they were primarily based in afghanistan pakistan and sudan which has led to drone strikes in those regions in recent years of his influence has reportedly sprung up more in yemen and somalia

which would lead to drone strikes there and mali may be next on the list with all these important leaders of al qaeda being taken out or drone strikes doing their job of eliminating dangerous terrorists and as a result is america safer scott horton contributing editor for harper's magazine joins us now scott i want to read you a quick quote from the washington post that says on at least ten occasions in the past decade al qaeda is a sustained the last of a senior operative described at some point as the number three and it's higher q what do you just it's just the greek mythological hydro where you know when you take one head out another will pop up in its place. well i think him and and part it's because of their organizational structure of course you take out the number three and the new person is going to become number three so you have something of a whack a mole game here but i think in the past there's been some skepticism about people described as being senior figures but i would say that's not the case with al libbi

the person who is taken out today i mean really he has been the subject of extensive profiles in the media a special article in the new york times for instance and he's been profiled by a number of other people peter bergen at c.n.n. he's the real mccoy he clearly is the senior leadership figure and i think the essence of the washington post story is correct that is there's just no doubt that in the last three years there has been a dramatic ramping up of the attack going after senior al qaeda leaders and in fact this organization has been reduced to a pale shadow of what it once was now that raises the question that you you also mentioned of al qaida in the arabian peninsula somalia and other places and i'll just say that you know i and many other people who've studied them are

much more skeptical about those organizations their capacity for threat and their even their linkage to the original al qaeda organization than one phenomenon that's going on here is that we have an intelligence operation right now in which we have ten american operatives or analysts for every one else the member at least maybe more than that and we've got a lot of people trying to preserve their jobs by establishing and talking the risk threat here and i think when we look at some of these starts coming out of africa that's definitely the case so do you think we're not ready yet and i'm just going to as you think the threat is completely overblown at this point i mean that we're going to the u.s. government makes al qaeda out to be this tentacle like organization with sleeper cells all in america and spreading all across the middle east would you say that that's completely overblown. i would say that there that you have to look at it in

that case by case basis so if we're looking at yemen yes there definitely is something in yemen and let's not forget some of the modern himself was you minnie i mean this in a sense was part of a core part of the organization there the allegations are more serious but they're still probably overblown in terms of the threat is going to lot of people there who are identified as being part of the threat in fact are just different tribal groups who are in opposition to the sala dictatorship and yemen but you know let's contrast that with mali i mean i've spent quite a bit of time studying and evaluating the situation in mali and my view is the claims of them valmont there are vastly overblown we're looking at a torah stand you know uprising that has some you know extremist islamist elements what the other been extreme this is almost elements there forever is nothing new about that and nothing that presents a particular risk tied to al qaeda scott you said yourself to some of these people

aren't even affiliated with al qaeda they might just be extremists in other organizations and it seems like when the government touts you know that someone's a member of al qaeda it's really just you know they're dead and it's really there's no due process for these people to see really if they were complicit in the crimes that we've set out when we assassinate them i want to ask you though why do you think it is that al qaeda wasn't even referred to as an organization before nine eleven it was just a tactic. well you know i think before nine eleven we have a handful of people in the united states and the f.b.i. and the cia who were focused on the car that were tracking it who were trying to deal with it and identify that this is a serious threat it didn't get that sort of higher level political attention that even after the u.s.s. cole attack that only came after nine eleven so i think in part that's sort of a domestic political situation it was literally never even referred to those literally never referred to in the f.b.i. as a group but scott i want to ask you really quickly you know every time there's

a new al qaeda leader taken out it seems like there's a pentagon official right there in the mainstream press saying this is exactly why we need these drone wars do you think that they're just how do you need these just to continue to justify obama's drone wars. well i think there's a problem i mean look we really have a question of balancing tactics versus strategies here and i think when you look at what's going on particularly in pakistan and yemen it seems like a lot of strategies a lot of tactics in search of a strategy we still have a strategy because drones are a good tactical device they can be used effectively to deal with terrorists and isolated conditions certainly in conditions like you have and pakistan and yemen but the brother strategic concern has to be not just a limb in a they give them but also a limb in aiding the breeding grounds so to speak their ability to recruit and and

also the risk of deterioration in relations between the u.s. and the governments of all the i mean particularly we've seen the meltdown in u.s. relations with pakistan over the last couple guys and dana and panetta just came out today and said that we're actually at war officially with pakistan and people have told reporters their people on the ground have said you know you consider al qaeda terrorists we consider drones terrorism i mean you're saying that drones can be used and a good way but i mean do you think that it's really helping the war on terror to fight terror with terror. now look if the use of drones and the north-west frontier era area of pakistan results in the open war with pakistan which is a nuclear power with the largest growing nuclear arsenal in the world then the use of drones has not been successful even if it's taking out the outcry that it's produced

a new and bigger problem and that i think is what we need to focus on this is for instance what admiral blair former national security advisor and the white house has been saying for some time and scott what do you think the threat really is i mean it in america and americans are more likely to be killed by a lightning strike or accidentally suffocating in bed than actually die of a terrorist attack i mean do you think this is completely overblown should we even be focusing on this a loose affiliated group in the middle east as a threat to our nation frankly. if you look at the quadrennial defense report that's in preparation now you look at the tactical analyses are coming out of the cia it's clear that notwithstanding this political rhetoric our own intelligence community in our own defense community no longer view this islamic terrorist threat as the principal security risk to the united states they're looking elsewhere and then fact you'll find outcry this slipping off the list of the top five threats so

it's captured the attention of the american media and american politicians but the people who are really serious about the subject no longer view it as a prime concern very interesting thanks so much for joining us scott that was scott horton contributing editor for harper's magazine. an unexpected or not so unexpected blow to the democratic party and wisconsin's recall election last night after months of daily protests heated debates and vicious attack ads the tight race between tom barrett and scott walker resulted in keeping his seat as wisconsin's governor walker outspent barrett ten to one and some are saying that the money had a major influence on the victory so what's the quiet on the ground today and why is this election significant or to correspondent christine for zero is in wisconsin and filed this report. for the outsider it looks like any other day in madison wisconsin. but for many it will be a day spent trying to pick up the pieces how does it feel now that it's all for me

a disappointing. it all but my so i didn't win some here say it came down to a contest of labor versus corporations and in this case corporations won big time i think all be out of state money mainly to cope brothers was just unconscionable i think it's just a really sad day for wisconsin and i'm in mourning today week by the right person that way but you know that that's the big think danny can this was the scene outside the capitol on election night. with supporters remaining hopeful and vigilant. the idea of their efforts falling short in comprehensible. c.n.n. n.b.c. a.b.c. have all announced governor walker has won just wanted to get your reaction to that . but that neighbor wisconsin if that's the truth. really is that day for

a lot of us well despite that energy that overwhelming enthusiasm the effort to recall governor scott walker has failed and now a message has been set it's a message many believe has the power to change this country. forever. then we go to. the. well. yet tough decisions like cracking down on collective bargaining rights for workers or the spark that led to this firestorm more than a year ago. fast forward and that fire. is now dying down so those of you who fought up pain signatures who stood out in the cold who did what you thought was right never ever stop doing what you think is right an election day hangover sixteen months in the making in madison wisconsin

christine for south our team. so far to correspondent christine for zero is there right now in wisconsin and joins us live christine thanks so much for going out there to cover this it seems like there was a lot of emotions. you know going around after the results can you talk a little bit about what it was like to be there. well abbie you're absolutely right i can't tell you how many people were absolutely shocked and devastated some of these people have really spent a better part of this year focusing on yesterday focusing their energy and their efforts they really believed because there were so many of them because there was a passion behind their movement that they were going to see a victory they were ignoring the polls leading up to this election and when they found out in a lot of them were here for an hour or so after the results had come in on the news and they still were unwilling to believe that scott walker would. essentially be able to keep his job something they were hoping wouldn't happen and i'll tell you i

can probably say it with a lot of certainty that this is the first quiet day that this capital has seen in a very very long time despite the fact that governor walker is here in this building behind me he's resumed work today he's meeting with his cabinet inside and there's not protests there's a report you may remember that i did a couple days ago i profiled a group called the solidarity singalong they were here about seventy five eighty of them showed up this thing as usual as they've been doing for the last sixty five and a half weeks they're going to be doing that just through the end of the week and then it's over so it really feels abbie like you know kind of a big day happened yesterday and like i said you know just a lot of emotions and a lot of mourning going on here christine what do you think happened. well. quite a bit happened there were there were two campaigns and you know we went to campaign events with both candidates and i've got to say i mean governor walker is a very good campaigner he is on point he is on message and his message was really

able to resonate with the voters you know the pictures that that we saw so often over the last year and a half a lot of them came from right where i'm standing they came from madison wisconsin this is a liberal city it's a city full of students and it's a city where the most ainger has been i spoke to a business owner this morning who has supported walker all along and said he was threatened he said he couldn't put a bumper sticker on his car in madison because his friends who did that got their keep cars keyed that is not how it looks like if you look at a map of the state of wisconsin a whole lot of it is red and those are the people who came out in large numbers yesterday to show their support you know as i mentioned also this had to do with quite a bit of money governor walker outspent his opponent by about seven and a half to one more than thirty million dollars you're putting those messages out on the television on the internet on the radio so anyone who was undecided several months ago because you know by the way there are very few people who are undecided

as of the last few days that people were decided a while ago they you know had their minds made up because they had plenty of messages coming their way so a lot of fire a lot of passion there maybe people didn't want to come out and vocalize their support for walker christine did you talk to any people who were undecided going up until today election no in fact polls show that most people have known who they were going to vote for for at least the last month and a half it's hard to be undecided when you have such a fiery passionate debate this is not a. subject that people were wavering on people either chose walker or they chose barrett even before there was a name candidate to take on governor walker has actually been in the works for a few weeks now but so many people just knew that they wanted walker out or they knew that they were standing with walker not. the signs on their lawn and on their cars and on their businesses that we stand with walker so i certainly. but it was very hard to find anyone who was undecided in this race well it seems hard to

believe that after a year of building up to this christine that it's all over i mean i know that you said that there are people outside protesting for the next week is that going to be it is it really over. you know some of the people i talked to today said you know we're just getting started this isn't even close to over but you can see the energy level is drained they put up a good fight and they've lost so you know certainly the presidential election isn't far off it's just a few months away i'm sure a lot of those people will rally behind their candidate and their causes across the state of wisconsin and across this country because remember this really was an election with national significance i think as far as what happens next though i mean it's going to vary state to state it's going to decide it's going to be determined by what governors want to do based on yesterday's results and some governors are going to want to take action swift action because of what they saw in the state of wisconsin definitely a monumental election and christine thanks so much for going out there on the ground covering it are two correspondent christine for. be sure to tune in to our

five o'clock hour we saw what happened wisconsin when money enters the picture and before you know it november will be here now that money is synonymous with speech kind of cold hard cash by the presidency that's coming up tonight at five so tune in still ahead on our team do as the u.s. says not as it does congress ramps up regulations of the internet the obama administration's tearing down cyber walls and covertly attacking foreign governments so what's with the blatant hypocrisy back in a minute. our t. 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.

a client of american power continues. things are so bad that might actually be time for a revolution. and it turns out that a popular drink of starbucks as a surprise to him greedy is. when it comes to the faceless threat of cyber terror american apocryphally rings a lot unclear recently with the u.s. government's been ramping up fear about cyber terrorism saying that cyber warfare will soon be the biggest threat facing the u.s. and recent documents they say that cyber attacks will be viewed by america as an act of war which could warrant retaliatory military force well congress introduces countless numbers of security measures to prevent attacks the government attacking

other countries it's now confirmed that the u.s. working in concert with israel created stuxnet at the computer virus that was used to infect iran's nuclear enrichment programs so what precedent does this set for the rest of the world and will engage in cyber warfare but america at risk for ten activists with the electronic frontier foundation joins me now tim what do you think about this hypocritical rhetoric coming from the white house saying that you know if someone gauges in an act of cyber war then we can retaliate with military force and at the same time here it comes out that they you know in concert worked with israel. right this could have huge implications going forward not just in the u.s. but with other countries. you know as you said the pentagon said a year ago that a cyber war attack on the u.s. could be looked at as a real act of war and the u.s.

could actually retaliate with with real weapons and now we find out last week from the new york times that the u.s. government is actually engaged in cyber attacks against iran and president obama according to the new york times is it has been acutely aware of the situation where we're setting precedent for other nations and that's where the real problem lies because we've been criticizing china for allegedly attacking united states companies and u.s. governments while the same time engaging in this in the same conduct with other countries and so this could pull open up a huge new can of worms and as the new york times pointed out this is a similar situation the u.s. faced the one nine hundred forty s. when it was developing and tom a bomb it's really important that we set guidelines and limits to how we act and react in the in these situations because it could have huge effects in the future trevor what do you think about the ramping up of cyber terrorism as this giant threat i mean we saw robert mueller come out and say that that's going to be

surpassed terrorism as the number one threat facing the nation and then here comes out that they're engaging in it all along across these names to these other nations what do you think about them using this threat against our nation to pass legislation like sista. yes they've been engaged in fear mongering to pass this bill which unfortunately doesn't even really address the cyber security issue the problem of the problems with. our it just addresses information sharing so it lets companies and governments share a huge amounts of information with each other which could lead to companies giving your personal information your communications so the government without a warrant which current privacy law now prevents and so cisco kind of carbs a giant hole into this and that's not even really attacking the problem so if we take stocks that for example they used four zero day exploits and stocks that zero the exploits are essentially vulnerabilities in software that allows attackers to get into a system and take your information well when governments have these other people

have them too and there's a huge underground market for the zero to exploit which are being sold to governments all around the world for hundreds of thousands of dollars now it should be the u.s. policy where if they find out about a zero day exploit that they that they tell a company immediately they tell a browser that their their system is vulnerable and they can fix it and make us all safe unfortunately when they keep them to themselves we're all less safe do you think that this could be a possibility that they're trying to create a cyber retaliatory attack against this countries than they can justify passing his bills by doing this covert warfare against iran. i mean i wouldn't go that far i think that you know there's plenty of evidence that cyber attacks are already happening against the u.s. as well i mean not to say that this is an invisible is that they're completely making up this threat what i'm saying is that the laws they're trying to ask would invade people's privacy and you know wouldn't accomplish the goals they even want

to accomplish they are using as an as they are using it as an excuse to you know like less than privacy laws but actually google came out the other day and said they were going to start telling users when they think that they're being hit with a state sponsor attack we've already seen google issue warnings to individual users in the last day or two including national security reporters and even the obama reelection campaign members saying that their g.-mail accounts were attempted to be hacked by state sponsored state sponsored hackers so we know it's a problem but the way that they're going about attacking it and their hypocrisy in actually doing it themselves is really where the real issue eyes trevor what do you think about just our surrounding iran on all sides with our military and also just the saber rattling and going along with also the taking out of nuclear scientists that the explosion that was suspected to be from the stuxnet that that killed

multiple people there i mean it just seems like we're just saber rattling then waiting for them to strike what do you think about that. well i mean i think the stocks that the stock that virus how it worked was it overwhelmed their centrifuges and their nuclear facilities and the explosion and the whatever damage it caused stocks and this wasn't involved in any of the explosions that killed iranian scientists that's a completely separate issue where scientists have been found dead. by targeted assassination it seems like the i mean the real problem is that we you know we're trying to negotiate with iran right now to get them to stop their nuclear program but at the same time we're engaged in these covert activities which when iran finds out about them obviously they're going to be upset and it could end up backfiring on us completely where you know we could make progress in negotiations using

diplomacy but where they end up. realizing that the u.s. is attacking the u.s. cyber warfare and could end up. you know ending that go she asians actually well i guess that's the real question is why why is the white house saying publicly that we're trying to negotiate them with with them peacefully about their nuclear program you know the saying shins and all this but at the same time actually engaging in warfare and making these acts against their facilities thanks so much for coming on and sharing your opinion that was trevor tim activists at the electronic frontier foundation thanks capital account is up next on our team so let's check in with lauren lyster to see what's on today's agenda hey lauren i have a well today i don't know if you saw that on the hill were some of the regulators who oversaw j.p. morgan chase as they lost two billion dollars on a risky bet that it's questionable if they should even have been able to make as jamie dimon walks away with twenty three million dollars in compensation and

everyone else is left scratching their heads as far as how regulators missed this we didn't get a lot of clarity from them today but we will get clarity on our set with francine mechanics she is an accounting watchdog writes for forbes american banker on her own blog and she's going to tell us how and why it is that regulations are not in force because they're on the books abbi they're just not being carried out the police on the beat are asleep or complicit we're going to find out thanks lauren that does it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash or to america or check out our website or to talk holmes last usa you'd also follow me on twitter martin we'll see you in a half hour. the

for. more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations are on the day.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for langley you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm charming welcome to the big picture.