tonight on our team two hundred fifty thousand pages of treachery the documents that put wiki leaks on the map is now the main evidence against private first class bradley manning those same documents might be able to save them from some of the charges we'll tell you how. all those people can be swayed by a constant barrage of misinformation and that's what's happening with this thirty five million dollars about a state money girls hangover day in wisconsin in the years and state democrats are licking their wounds after an embarrassing loss and historic recall vote will bring you an update from the state. right there goes my mother ever write a. book. right up but ron paul supporters are certainly known for being passionate

and a term and another r. and c. is trying to stop some of his fans are republican establishment is putting the come bosch on a ron paul party to celebrate their candidate success we'll tell you what his fans are doing about it. wednesday june sixth eight pm and then washington d.c. i'm having martin and you're watching our team. he's declared as an enemy to somebody's hero to many army private bradley manning is allegedly responsible for the largest government leak and u.s. history after being held without charges for over two years manning's pretrial hearings finally started today he's charged with twenty two counts including aiding the enemy which holds a life sentence in a military prison it's a very serious charge that deserves a fair trial at the u.s. government is holding on to two hundred fifty thousand documents relating to his case that are being withheld from the defense for an update i was joined earlier

from someone who's been at the trial all morning kevin stall a blogger on the dissenter at firedoglake dot com take a listen. to some of what happened i would say that today the big issue was all about whether the defense is going to get the evidence that they need to represent bradley manning and the government today was actually exposed and i sort of suspected since i've been covering this you know going back to december that there was a sort of game being played a bubble what was really clear today is that the government has been misrepresenting intentionally the sort of evidence that it has in its possession that it knows agencies possess which they do not want to turn over to the defense. why are they saying that they're withholding the documents they cite along a long list and they seem to make these up as they get challenged but they have to do with the law they cite legal reasons and all name military justice rules they

talk about the fact that the defense hasn't been specific enough and they make up how they haven't used certain terms that you would have normally used and then they also talk about how basically they're not making any sort of factual argument that would support actually actually providing this information to the defense so they're just you know going above and beyond to stall and make sure that they can keep this going where they don't provide the information that the defense wants kevin you've called the judge's decision about these documents ridiculous and you compared it to a high school classroom where you can't even bring in your computer and it's hard for you to really keep up on the trial when you talk about why why the freedom of information act is not on the side of the defendant here so that statement that i made was about whether we're going to release court filings that are happening in this case and so i just would like to make clear to people who are watching this

segment that when i sit there and the judge talks about what you know when they read the orders and when they read the filings i don't get to see this document at the end of the day to confirm that what i heard was exactly what i heard so when i hear things in court it's you know it's one and done and what's ridiculous is that . in the military commissions for nine eleven terror suspects we can see these documents and the press and public has access to the database but in the case of bradley manning i don't get to have this in practically it's very difficult for me as a reporter because i have to rely on that real time hearing and i expect better . sort of a let's get to the core of what this is really about i mean in the last two years they put bradley manning as the scapegoat they've said that he's pretty much guilty before he even had a chance to prove his innocence or his guilt and he's been psychologically broken down the solitary confinement all of that do you think that these documents would

prove his innocence or that he didn't really do anything to compromise national security so the defense is saying that there's two hundred fifty thousand documents that they believe are being withheld and i don't know that i don't actually think that they're talking about the cables they're talking about different things that really pertain to the case the investigation into wiki leaks the investigation into bradley manning and anything that might be connected to that and you know the big key thing here is without saying it quite frankly it seems like the government is wanting to invoke state secrets privilege without saying that and that is in effect what they are doing and we've seen federal cases in civilian courts where the government won't turn things over because of national security you know so-called national security reasons and in this case they've appointed themselves as the sort of the keeper of this information about the government and they're taking this and doing these things on behalf of the government to protect the information from

being disclosed and that's just not the role the judges actually the person who makes the decision on whether evidence is supposed to be turned over to the defense is not the government or the prosecutions decision why do you think there's so much secrecy and talk about your petition to get these documents right so you know there's just a lot of secrecy because that's that's really what is at the core of this trial i mean wiki leaks released all these documents about what are the u.s. government was actually doing and exposed bribery corruption fraud war crimes except and this is just you know. the compensation i mean the surprising thing that if they're revolting against transparency that they would engage in more secrecy to sort of turn back the wheels here a little of that and so i've signed onto a petition with the center for constitutional rights and others are signed on are

going greenwald jeremy scahill amy goodman of democracy now chase made our who wrote a book called the passion of bradley manning and there are others julian simon wiki leaks are also signed on and we've decided that we want to be able to see everything that is a legal document in this case that would be in a database that would give us access and we could see why the government is arguing what it does we see plainly what they are doing to convict bradley manning. what you know right now about the case and about bradley manning do you think that he compromise national security with the leaks well so far they haven't produced a single piece of evidence that shows that there's been any damage or impact and in fact what was shared today in the hearing is that the files that have been turned over there has been some evidence that has been turned over to the defense and these materials from twenty agencies are usually one to two pages and they say no damage or no impact or there was some damage and there was an impact but we're not

really sure where we think it happened to this agency so go check here and they really haven't given anything concrete so to date there is actually no evidence that there were any any harm done by these leaks and and what's critical about me making that point is is that the military believes that they do not have to prove harm in this case in order to convict bradley manning they believe that harm should not factor in to whether bradley manning spends life in prison or gets the death penalty or whatever sensing they're going to give them if they if you as convicted did a very serious charge that should be taken very seriously and i want to get your opinion just on people like daniel ellsberg who's been hailed as a hero you know whistleblowers expose fraud corruption and all of these things yet bradley manning is looked at as an enemy of the state at this point why do you think that is the question retreating these two people i mean it's like people in this country have been conditioned now to think that if you take it upon yourself

to expose war crimes or misconduct that you're in fact a problem that you are a nuisance and you're doing something that you shouldn't be doing because you don't have a right to do any somebody i actually saw today on the internet reacting to manning coverage saying that manning was a mature too to do this that this is something that you shouldn't do and you should grow up and it's just it's the people in this country now. seem to have this revulsion when somebody blows the whistle about what is really happening in war happening and conflicts are or was happening in inside the government i mean a quick example the los angeles times published a couple photos of soldiers holding up mangled corpses of suicide bombers and their reaction to that was just amazing to me come back as a national many readers were just going off and getting angry at this newspaper actually engaging in what i consider to be freedom of the press and i wouldn't gauge and freedom of the press like that to show in the rock truth of war and

people can make up their minds of how they feel about combat after that really quickly to wrap up the segment haven't i wanted to get your opinion just on obama's lead up to the campaign he's going to protect whistleblowers it's so important and then he's the most you know he's had the most egregious crackdown on whistleblowers of any administration i just wanted to get your opinion on that it would seem to be all words i mean i think basically if you looked at him when he was a senator and if you if you would consider people like i just read i just finished reading sibel edmonds book and in it she talks about knowing exactly from conversations with him as a senator that he wasn't going to be any friend of whistleblowing and she's of course an f.b.i. whistle blower and i think i just tell you that he came in intentionally wanting us to believe one thing and then now that he's been exposed he's being you know we're going to have to deal with that i mean he's now going to have to face the fact that a lot of people are waking up to this reality that he is no friend of transparency

is no friend of whistleblowers look at what he does and not what he says and this is a very important case thanks for covering it kevin and hopefully we'll get updates mean a future i was coming to follow a blogger on the dissenter at firedoglake dot com. an unexpected or not so unexpected blow to the democratic party in wisconsin's recall election last night after months of daily protests heated debates and vicious attack ads the tight race between barrett and walker resulted in walker keeping his seat as wisconsin's governor walker outspent barrett ten to one and some are saying that the money factor had a major influence on the victory so what's the climate on the ground today and why is this election significant r.t. correspondent christine for zero is in wisconsin and filed this report for us. 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. you know that 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 and we let you know that that. 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 the sad day for wisconsin about the truth with a really sad 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. a a. 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 far looked pained signatures who stood out in the cold. 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 sound. well it seems like money really can buy a lections so is the walker spending really what to seat to answer that question or more i was joined by brad friedman earlier investigative journalist for brad blog dot com here's his take. well you know i've got two ways to answer that one obviously the spending was extraordinary something like thirty million raised by by scott walker to three or four million raised by tom barrett so obviously that's going to have an effect he was out on the air outspending him on the on the t.v. like twenty five to one free right ring right wing radio is giving him you know three to one time in violation i should add of of the equal time requirements by the f.c.c. so yeah these were big guns big money and big money may have won here i say may

have won because you know a lot of people were looking at those exit polls last night the media was telling us they were tight as could be and then within an hour after the polls closed suddenly they had a winner now i should mention here that in wisconsin they use mostly paper ballots for their elections however they don't bother to actually count any of them they're all counted or tallied i should say by optical scan computers which are frequently inaccurate just a few months ago down in palm beach county we saw a race where an optical scan machine named several losing candidates to be the winners well they use the very same machines up there in in wisconsin and they don't check a single one of them after the election to make sure that the computers tally the. races correctly i think that should be a great concern to a lot of voters of both parties down there because you also have

a democratic senator democratic challenger in one of the state senate recalls down there now claiming victory and that's going to change the balance of the wisconsin state senate if he's correct if he actually won that race but again nobody has bothered to examine the paper ballots bradley interesting that they won or lost it's interesting you mention that it sounds very. they are to what we see time and time again with the diable machines and all that and you're right the journalist sentinel actually reported a deadlock fifty to fifty and then we saw kind of the percentage points eking out and got walker in who takes these machines home and reports the final tally. well they don't take the machines home they were report them the night of the election they run the ballots through these machines at the precinct and then those tallies which are either right or wrong we don't know because nobody bothers to

check are then reported to the county and then the county announces them to the media actually to a.p. there is no central reporting headquarters in the state of wisconsin so they go the numbers go through a lot of hands unfortunately they don't go through many eyeballs no human beings actually look at those ballots to make sure that the computers are telling them correctly it's not just by the way it's companies named sequoyah e s n s we just saw that the e s n s machines that are used in several counties in wisconsin lost thousands of votes in the two thousand and ten election in new york and we only found that out two years later when the new york daily news that a public records request to. actually look at those paper ballots so until we start looking at these paper ballots what we're forced to do is accept these results as if they're accurate completely on faith because again in wisconsin they don't check

a single paper ballot to make sure that it was recorded accurately by the computers before they go ahead and and announce the winners of these races it's it's crazy for had you know you're talking about the insane amount of money that was spent on this campaign and the fact that none of these ballots were double checked and perhaps won't be double checked unless there's a demand for it do you think that this is going to cause just a massive disillusionment from this huge push for the recall election for people who just say well money just wins again i mean not really question the results because it's just the same amount of spending. oh yeah i mean i'm sure a lot of the democrats out there are disillusioned i mean you know if that democratic challenger to that senate race ends up winning then in fact the democrats will get control of the senate they will have won something here where really the republicans end up with losing a number of seats in the state senate but i think it is very disturbing i think

a lot of people are disillusioned by the process they see this huge amount of money coming in that frankly we the people and the unions that support the democrats just can't match on the democratic side when we're talking about corporate money corporate profits now higher than they have ever been in the history of this nation that's the money that is buying a lections but if we don't bother to actually. verify these elections to make sure that they've been recorded accurately you know all the money in the world doesn't make a difference we're letting democracy slip away from us here in the united states both by money and by the privatization of our public electoral system by the machinery of our elections also the dirty tricks that were reported the robo calls saying that if you voted for the recall you don't have to vote all these different

things kind of you know affected the outcome of brad i mean let's talk about the money really quickly how much money would it really take to buy someone's vote i mean if you see an attack ad does it really influence your vote that much. you know when you see i remember scott walker had his ads on the air going back all the way to christmas while the democrats were busy fighting out a primary they only had a candidate as of a month ago scott walker has been on the air for months now destroying the democrats destroying the unions singing his own praises all the money in the world would have made it very difficult for tom barrett who just found out he was the nominee to match that kind of money and until there are limits put back on this on our public airwaves by the way until there is somebody policing this whether it's the f.c.c. the f.c.c.

anybody trying to rein our elections back in so they become debates about policy not merely about you know retaining power or stealing power from the other side until that happens this situation is going to get worse and worse and if you talk to anybody on the ground in wisconsin they'll tell you they have never been barraged like they have from from all sides i should say like they were this year but certain knowledge is that is entertaining that is interesting how is that doable yeah if people are really that susceptible to negative campaign ads i mean you can look at this campaign attack ad against obama for flying his barber out from chicago every two weeks but i just don't know if that's really going to change i guess the barrage time and time again who knows it just seems like people are really for or against and how much could be attack ads really do to buy their vote to stop this the segment that really quickly but i want to get into the national

significance of wisconsin and why was this so historical. well we've never seen a race like this we've only had three gubernatorial recalls in the history of this country this is scott walker is the first one who purportedly survived his both sides are going to make something of this as they move towards november the republicans are going to be bullied by this thinking well yes that's the way to go let's destroy unions and let's put every corporate dollar we can into it i'm trying to warn the democrats and even the republicans a be careful what you wish for and b. make sure that you know the winner actually won these races we have had too many elections this happens election after election where people walk away saying i don't understand. the results the results don't make sense and that's what you saw all across the mainstream media last night they thought it was going to be

a long night and yet within an hour the computers declared scott walker the winner we're about to use those very same computers across the entire country the same systems that can be that can be hacked that often just melt function we're going to use those same computers this november in the presidential race and i'd hate to see a repeat of two thousand and two thousand and four but at a definitely exactly where we had definitely things like this is a recurring thing and not talked about as much as it should be thanks so much for coming on and giving your opinion that is brad friedman investigative journalist for brad blog dot com ron paul supporters are getting the shaft once again in the establishment g.o.p. this time they're being blocked from holding a three day ron paul festival in tampa florida just days before they are in sea convention romney has won enough delegates to secure his nomination so why is the g.o.p. still so nervous about ron paul supporters brian seaman director of paul fest joined

me earlier to talk about the events that unfolded as he attempted to hold the festival take a listen. we started this process back in february and we contacted the florida state fairgrounds they told us that the venue was available and that we could have those dates but we had to get permission from the r. and c. as they contract out all the venues around the tampa area about two years prior to this so we had to actually contact the are in these committee own arrangements to get permission to do this we went to their website filled in the application that they have on their website and from there we had a waiting period in the beginning of may the r. and c. told the fairgrounds that they could go ahead and start negotiating the contract with us which obviously gave us the assumption of course that we had the venue sometime in about halfway through may the r n c said wait we said you can negotiate a contract that doesn't mean we're releasing the venue and that we would no more june first was that we had the venue june first came and the r. and c.

told us that they still had not reviewed her application and it could be a couple more weeks before they do so and that they're not going to really comment any more be on that so i thought this point we started the assumption that they were purposely dragging their feet to not allow us to have this venue as i said bryan way for that you know lagging so much time would really and they hit the tendency would really enter the festivals success and so that's why it's so important to get the deadlines out and to get it going brian are you surprised though i mean you see ron paul supporters there pretty much covered wall to rabble rousers you can see them you know booing romney and just other things that they've done are you surprised that oh yeah we're going to play a. yes or no answer i mean really obviously being involved with ron paul not with his campaign officially but just being involved in the around paul moving him since about two thousand a we're not really that surprised given the way the party has

treated his supporters but at the same time most of the people. one our staff who are working for this are registered republicans so this is not. a bunch of democrats or or independents coming in trying to put on a festival to. outshine the r. and c. or anything like that we're actually registered republicans and i think that this could be good for them you know we're not obviously at the festival other people other than ron paul supporters are going to be there so you would think that they want to set up a booth try to get people to register as republican and join the party so yes we're not surprised because of the way they treated ron paul and his supporters but we're kind of surprised because as you said they they assume mitt romney has the nomination so what and why were they scared and we don't know they won't tell us they give us one word answers or responses like we can't speak on that right now or isn't that just the crux of it is that the wrong paul's supporters are really trying to work within the g.o.p. and the g.o.p. is kind of just turning their back and saying we don't want to have really anything

to do with you guys you guys are to stream why do you think that is why are the ron paul supporters trying to mold the g.o.p. when it's so divided between both ideologies and side of it i think that it's not so much that we're trying to mold or take over the g.o.p. it's more trying to get the g.o.p. back to its original platform they did have the platform of limited government lower taxes following the constitution and that's ron paul's message so you know it does kind of shock us that they would want people to come back in and bring them back to their original form but taken the fact that they are big establishments already you can understand why they might reject that at this point yeah but ron paul is just one one guy out of the entire g.o.p. and these political candidates hussein let's bring it back to our roots i mean how likely is that related to rein in the g.o.p. back from this military spending and these endless wars and really what their camp

what their entire group is based on right now back to ron paul. as a libertarian less government philosophies i mean would it make more sense to just start another party or run as third party and get out of that two party system that's what i think you guys i think the two party system well in ways i think two party system somewhat of a sham they don't seem to be too much difference between mitt romney and barack obama so and of course that was the same thing with john mccain and barack obama in my opinion but the vote the republicans and democrats have this is going locked up in poor third party to be any player in this country it's virtually impossible so if you really want to affect change in this country you're going to have to do it through the republican and democrat party in order to get got done so it really doesn't make sense for somebody like ron paul to run as a libertarian he's been a twelve term congressman as a republican he's been in the party when he goes around when his campaign trail he's very effective at raising money for state g.o.p.'s so he's not a g.o.p.

he helps inside the party he raises money for them. that's going to do it for the news tonight but stick around you know as animated thom hartmann is coming up at the top of the hour and tonight's edition of the big picture wisconsin union leaders are singing their recall blues tonight how to tell you why democracy is in jeopardy and why organization may be the only way to overcome so-called all of darks and tumble take on a panel of conservative experts to discuss everything from citizens united to allegations of republicans rigging an economic collapse so stay tuned for that and that does it for now for more on the stories we covered go to our you tube channel you tube dot com slash our to america or check out our website our to dot com slash usa you can also follow me on twitter at abby martin for now have a great night and we'll see you tomorrow.