place. jamie diamond explaining how j.p. morgan chase lost more than two were billion dollars attorney general eric holder facing new fire from republicans over the fast and furious botched gun sting programs president obama and mitt romney trade barbs over who understands the economic suffering of americans more care i'm only a kid and not being greedy and seen your traditional ice cream sundaes really special elections that are seat once held by the injured congresswoman gabrielle giffords rushes defending its sale of arms to the syrian government but then accusing the u.s. of arming the other side shellie zimmerman is accused of lying about the couple's finances during his april bail hearing eighteen month old is exacted from the getaway car as those teenagers tried to escape officials following the robbery have you seen one of those sort of freaky looking sleep apnea masks well there's a new study that suggests they might cure more than just sleeping problems prosecutors lay the groundwork in an already damaging case against the accused pedophile jerry sandusky jamie dimon appears on capitol hill to say j.p.

morgan chase's multibillion dollar loss is an isolated event american contractors allison hannigan is a proud mom for the second time. much of that deserves coverage right jamie diamond eric holder of syria but that didn't stop the cable networks from making some time for some other stories like toddlers being ejected from cars actresses having babies and bacon sundays at burger king but what i wish they would have done with that extra time is take a look at a new pew research poll from the pew global attitudes project that measures public opinion around the world now this survey was conducted in twenty one countries in march and april of this year and while i would hardly call the results shocking they are very telling the here was one of the questions asked do you approve or disapprove of the united states conducting missile strikes from pilotless aircraft called drones to target extremists in countries such as pakistan yemen and somalia and like i said the results are shocking and they could have been easily predicted

but here they are the only country where a majority of respondents approved of drone strikes was us almost everybody else seventeen out of the twenty other countries from our european allies to muslim and asian nations will they didn't quite see things the same way the anomalies there were the u.k. and india the other interesting thing is that pakistan the only countries surveyed were drone strikes are actually going on well their results weren't published because peter says that the bill going to come out in a separate report now you could be saying well who cares what other countries think about our foreign policy but that's the thing at one point we did care hell that was one of the main critiques that was of the left during the bush administration the same left that now is not only fallen silent but expresses support for obama's drone policies but if that's the case then let's not be so surprised that we're often misunderstood that there's anti-american sentiment in the world that there are people who want to hurt as in retaliation for drone strikes that have killed their families friends and neighbors you can blindly pursue

a policy that leads to death and destruction and then be shocked by the consequences now sure drone strikes may put less on less risk onto the lives of american soldiers for now. they definitely cost a lot less money than standing armies they may lead to fewer civilian deaths and displacements than a traditional war for now but just because it's new when the president tells you that it's good does not mean that we shouldn't have a public debate about the legality the ethics the pros and cons and actually is specially because it's new and because we have an executive branch that acts on its own we should have a public debate about it and ask questions and those global opinion results should be taken into account but the mainstream media they're more than happy to just be asleep at the wheel to follow the leader and live in a bubble that sees fit to criticize the actions of other countries abroad but lack any introspection on its own that's what they choose to miss.

well today jay p. morgan c.e.o. jamie dimon had to testify before the senate finance committee about the two billion dollar whale fail loss and what do you know the executive found it in him to issue an apology. what a lot of people down and we were very sorry for. isn't that sweet but the thing is a congressional testimony that's supposed to be a good grilling that you get right we're supposed to get answers for what went wrong when diamond knew what but the consensus from today kind of the none of that happened here to discuss it with me is that william cohen former investment banker and author of the recently released paperback edition money and power how goldman sachs came to rule the world he's also contributing editor to vanity fair and a columnist for bloomberg view and from our studio in los angeles we have david de and blogger at firedoglake gentlemen i want to thank you both for joining me

tonight and before we get into you know i know for example bill that you were actually there at the hearing today before we get into that i want to play a little clip that gave me of the impression of what went on and this comes from senator jim de mint. but i would like to come away from the hearing today with some . what you think we need to do. what we maybe need to take apart that we've already done to allow the industry to operate better and it's a shame to not put the american taxpayer risk i really honestly looking for some ideas as we look over the next year and hopefully in a position where we can make some positive changes. so can you explain this to me jamie dimon is on the hill he's supposed to be getting a grilling they're supposed to ask how is that these still have these risky practices going on these trades that you didn't understand you lost a billion dollars you know and more at the end of the day and jim de mint's just sitting around saying i can you tell us how to regulate you please you were

actually kind you could have picked another clip where they were much more fawning about jamie dimon the way i would phrase it is the first hour he got some grilling not hard grilling not extensive but enough grilling to make him feel like ok he's there for a reason the second hour was back to being king jamie again i mean they had anointed him once again as one of the leader of wall street it's like none of this ever happened i do agree with r.j. because he has i guess had this sort of angelic good guy image since the financial crash because everyone says jamie dimon he's so good at managing risk right this is the executive that can do no wrong and if he's still untarnished even all after all this. yes i agree with the exception of a few senators robert menendez sherrod brown and jeff merkley everybody else was was there just saying things like help us jamie dimon your only hope you know asking him for advice on everything from financial regulation to even the fiscal

situation of the country and it's not really surprising i mean i mean a lot of the senate banking committee is practically employees of jamie diamond i mean i think sixteen of the twenty two members of the committee have taken campaign contributions and in some cases loads of campaign contributions from diamond from j.p. morgan chase that is i'm happy you mentioned that actually i mean if we look at it for example chuck schumer who's on the committee j.p. morgan is their fourth largest dellinger and that's only after goldman sachs and morgan stanley and citigroup's they don't worry the other guys are still in there too same thing with corker same thing with the crap ok part of his name but there is j.p. morgan is the top the top donor there and say what does that tell you that can you have an honest grilling like i said again on capitol hill and are these congress members bought look i mean unfortunately what you're describing is a situation that's been going on for generations right the the revolving door

between washington and wall street is spinning out of control now it's very easy to give what on wall street is or small amount of money and for these guys a large amount of money and to quote unquote get these guys to be sympathetic to you and i think you saw that today i mean here's a situation where you know the media you know when it's the media broke this story i think you know bloomberg t.v. and wall street journal deserve a lot of credit for breaking this story jamie dimon referred to it as a tempest in a teapot today he showed some contrition on that point but he didn't take blame for this you actually blamed some of his other executives and you know by the second half of this thing as we were just talking about the senators were reading out of his apologists and again you know once again you don't have the kind. and of serious examination of what happened the black box that is wall street that we all deserve at this point we don't deserve it i have people should be outraged over something like this that you know david can you explain to me what possible legal measures can be taken at this moment for example i know as you see is trying to

build a case against j.p. morgan and maybe it's a technicality that what if you can explain a little better to me because they didn't report on some kind of changes to their measurements i mean is that all they got working with lead to to some some grand cleanup. i don't know that anything is really going to come out of this. certainly should i mean on the level of the fact that when diamon and it's a question of timeline but when he knew about these trades and that they were going wrong he was putting out reports to shareholders saying that everything was fine and made that famous tempest in a teapot comment and if he takes responsibility for this which he actually did at one small point when he was talking to senator merkley today. these are violations of the securities laws i mean if if you have a lack of disclosure to your investors when you are engaging in risky activity that

ends up losing investor shareholder money that that is a clear violation and that's something the f.c.c. should pursue but i'm not convinced that they will. it's a very that's going to be a very tough case even if the f.c.c. chooses to take it up which i don't expect them to at all i mean you know last time i checked you know having a bad investment judgment is not against the law i mean basically what we have here is jamie dimon and his chief investment office having very poor investment judgment we had saw the same thing with the bear stearns hedge fund managers and they tried to prosecute them and of course that was a famous flame out where they got nowhere on it and i don't expect the f.c.c. to take up the culture on this no surprise you know any number of people who work at the f.c.c. want to work at j.p. morgan and vice versa there's a revolving door there too you know i think you know you look at you know to his credit when he knew things when he got the information that things were really out of control he did hold

a press conference and he admitted it all and you know took the blame for it and again we saw that again today such as it was i mean again you don't know what he knew and when he knew it was not going to go there wider stand that you know you don't necessarily need because often will what happens is the media we have public backlash in this public anger and everybody wants to see if the c.e.o. burned at the stake right just because they're this figure head that we look at but if there isn't going to be any change if there aren't going to be any new regulations implemented then you know then what is it all for and it was so disheartening i think to see some of these members of the finance committee say you know you guys actually do a lot better than we do in terms of losing money and we were the whole lot more of the j.p. morgan and that's supposed to be a funny or a joke but i want to move on to to another topic before we wrap things up here switch to what's going on in d.c. in terms of what we hear between the president and mitt romney what we hear between republicans and democrats here on capitol hill and that's who do you blame things on course in the romney is going to blame the state of the economy on barack obama

and barack obama alone and the obama campaign in the meantime let's take a little clip of very very doing the whole let's blame george bush thing again take a look. what they're not telling you is that they baked all this stuff into the cake with those tax cuts and a push for a prescription drug plan that they didn't pay for and the war that so all this stuff baked in with all the interest payments for it's like somebody goes to a restaurant orders a big steak dinner martini all that stuff. and then just as you're sitting down they leave. and accuse you of running up the ten. i mean it's a good one but david what do you say is that is that going to work is that fully true or what. i don't know if it's going to work but i don't think there's any question that if you look at our deficit issue and the causes of it

you have two ten year plus wars you have the tax cuts which took trillions of dollars out of the economy and then you have the recession and the automatic responses to that increased food stamps increased unemployment. insurance and those that's basically your reason for your deficit that we have now. there's a school of thought that the deficit actually needs to be a little more right now because we're still in sort of a sluggish recovery and we need more spending at some level of the economy and certainly businesses aren't doing it and we're not getting that out of trade so government is sort of the spender of last resort. but you have the president concerned about people talking about runaway deficits and runaway spending trying to put that on somebody else and it's technically true. but it's

almost the wrong problem i mean the problem is that we have an economy with millions of people out of work and a slack amount of demand which is the cause of that and the reason for that and we need to attack that problem rather than play the semantic games over who cause what part of what deficit i mean i think for any voter it's more i need a job and deficit is the highest priorities right now i have to wrap it up unfortunately but jennifer i want to thank you both for joining me tonight thank you. and i just ahead tonight everyone is still breaking out of the white house over leaks but will the investigation the proposed legislation actually just lead to a chill in the journalistic community our panel's coming up next. there

hasn't been anything good on t.v. . it is to get the maximum political impact. before source material is what helps keep journalism honest we. we want to present. something else. well this week marks the fortieth anniversary of the watergate scandal or early three initial break and ironic then write that as we mark this historic moment another scandal is brewing for the current white house as a bipartisan group of congress members calls for further investigation into leaks

the special counsel rather than just the prosecutors appointed by attorney general eric holder you have to ask yourself how times have changed how why this time around congress has crafting legislation to punish leaks and attacking the press rather than going after the president for what could be seen as unconstitutional crimes joining me to discuss this is david sirota who is a few very famously wrote a writer at salon dot com and author of the book a back to our future how the one nine hundred eighty s. explain the world we live in now and hopefully we're trying to get our second guest michael hastings here on the line too david we will start with you and thanks for joining us tonight and i have to say also that there is actually a letter out there that is crafted by dennis kucinich and there may be ten other signatories out there right now that are asking for a little more transparency and openness on the drone program when it comes to the obama administration but. it is taking this anniversary the watergate thing into account how times change in terms of the reaction the things that are happening now when it comes to the leaks what's really change is that there is

a war on leakers and whistleblowers as opposed to questions being raised about what is being about i wrote on my twitter feed the announcement that there's going to be an investigation into the leaking about the president's kill list rather than an an investigation or concurrently an investigation about the legality of the president's kill list so it's kind of akin to have the watergate situation happened in this moment you know congress would be calling for an investigation of woodward and bernstein and the media would be touting nixon and the break in as a side of president nixon campaign and its toughness so really what we've seen here is that those who deliver messages telling us of governmental wrongdoing are being vilified not the governmental wrongdoing itself. i couldn't agree with you more there as we're joined by our second guest tonight now we've got him on the line michael hastings contributing editor of rolling stone and author of the book the

operators and michael i'm curious what your take is on this obama white house because they claim that they're the must have transparent administration ever i think we all know that that isn't quite true and you know but just how controlling are there are they in terms of the message in terms of what you're allowed to say to the press who's allowed to talk to them how has that changed since you know the clinton days or even george w. well this white house puts a real premium premium on communications especially in their foreign policy some of the top people where the president's advisers have a communications background a media messaging background and often what we've seen in sort of the pattern with these stories is that we're portable going bad there are a lot of low level things or sort of that that might be very critical of the white house and then they strike a bargain with the white house officials say look we'll give you senior people who tell you sort of this behind the scenes stuff and the implicit and unspoken trade

off is then the stories will be more favorable for for the folks in charge and i believe from what i've been told by some of my sources is that that actually is what happened with the kill the story the original idea for the story was to focus more on civilian casualties and then the white house and said in a way why don't we you know sort of open up the doors and give us more details on this program and then it became a story that the commander in chief obviously in the central role. yeah they totally want to sell and the complete bad as he knows how to pick through a deck of cards in order someone's execution will that make me feel better anyway that say about our country today david where we're at that is something that the administration actually thinks will work and i don't know maybe it actually it does work as a selling point to make him seem like a better leader well that's the scary thing is that the news that the those who leaked information and there's a difference in whistle blowing and leaking leaking information is to is

a way to release information in a self-serving way that's not what was along is what we're talking about here is leaking and i think that the expectation of the white house is that they can leak information selectively that makes the president look good without having to worry that the information that they're leaking and and exposing governmental wrongdoing or at least legally questionable activities that the wrongdoing those those legally questionable activities won't be questioned themselves that was that my does that make the president look good i'm still in this is what i'm still confused about when i get back because of the way we define toughness and unfortunately the way we've come to define toughness since the bush administration is if you're a politician sitting in washington willing to execute people five thousand six thousand miles away that's how we define toughness that's i don't think that's a very good definition of toughness but that's the paradigm that's been set. right and you look at i mean the polls on the drone program in the united states something like seventy percent of democrats support the drone program and we just had the the international pew poll out today which shows that the drone program is

unpopular in many of the country who are doing the drones it still is popular in the us so that the white house does not see a political cost at all for taking these as as as david said you know our culture defined standard of toughness and sort of projecting that you know this sort of john wayne thing they don't see any political downside to that at all but michael you did write that these leaks could sink the white house in your latest piece what do you mean by that i mean how far could this go who's actually going to fall if anybody right probably the higher up they are the less likelihood that someone is going to go down well i think i think this is very serious look there are now two f.b.i. and the investigations with two is better prosecutors overseeing these leaks that leave these leak investigations and i think that the white house and sort of a strange bind in that they've become very draconian about draconian about these national security leaks and they've taken it's very hard line they're going to pursue them well the same time we know that they've given

a lot of sensitive information we don't know if it's classified or not out to all sorts of different reporters so you could easily see a situation where this snowballs into a larger scandal and you know some of the top people who but we know who are involved in these stories i mean granted enough the tray is donnel and i mean these guys are clearly sources for these stories and any legitimate investigation requires us talking to or requires investigators to talk to people like leon panetta to talk to people like general david petraeus to talk to the president's top staff and once you go down this slippery slope who knows where it will lead. david i mean that's a really good point a lot of people and bringing apps candles in the past for you have no idea what direction it's going to go and it's not just maybe obama administration officials but you know are journalists going to take the fall here. to see other lawmakers get involved in the leaking is nothing new here in washington d.c. and so you know what could the possible repercussions be you know going so hard on this well i think that the white house has sort of set itself up in the sense that

as michael mentioned the white house is prosecuting true whistle blew the whistle blowers right now people who have disclose information sensitive classified information at certain points to a great extent to their own self sacrifice courageous acts to try to get the truth out the way our society will be prosecuting those kinds of folks in a more aggressive fashion than any previous administration in contemporary history is creating this idea that anybody who disclose any information at all should be a target of law enforcement so they have set up a situation where now they're going to have to deal with the same kind of paradigm that they themselves have created they're going to if the president really just all disclosures of national security information all of a sudden his own staff is going to potentially be the target and that's a political problem i agree with michael. but let me hold on let me let me bring up omar thing too because we were talking about you know why is this something that's going to sell the president well and there's john wayne approach but there is there

are other problems in this i think that bruce ackerman had a great job you know op ed that he did in the new york times where he basically asks you know is willful if they willfully please you to shelter the safety or interest of the united states if the leaker is revealing to americans that the president is violating the constitution and so i'm just curious can someone actually be taken down for telling us that the president is violating the constitution and you know killing american citizens without due process. i mean i think the answer to that is is i think motive matters in a certain sense in the court of public opinion but i would i would say that you're right look it depends on how you look at this if you look at all of these disclosures as disclosing wrongdoing then i think the deeper questions are constitutional questions if unfortunately i think the u.s. senate and the white house is looking at this as john mccain calling for an investigation is not looking at this is let's find out the legality of the kill list looks lined up pretty well what the president's doing is unconstitutional not

he's actually what he has explicitly said is he doesn't want leaks of unconstitutional potentially unconstitutional behavior because he wants that behavior to continue quite literally he says he doesn't want this information out there because it would jeopardize future similar ongoing operations yeah that's a that's a very scary reality but that you know i mean what do you think michael in terms of why democrats are getting involved i mean still you know is there a guide is there present i know it's an election year maybe people want to look tough maybe are not they want to pick israel off because of what was revealed in the second step in that story look look there's this bipartisan national security consensus and they everyone feels like they have to fall in line behind it and if you're on these intelligence committees like senator dianne feinstein you cannot seem to be pro leak at all even though congress leaks like a sieve as well i think one of the points to get to go back to to is how does this actually play out with the journalist involved who've been writing these stories because one of the things you know one of the actually very positive that maybe one

of the few positive aspects of this story is that it has been a testament some really great investigative journalist scott shane at the new york times even even today david sanger stuff it is all very fascinating and what he sort of dug up but but now we again this sort of investigation if the government wants to resolve it quickly that's probably going to require going after the reporters so you know this could cause. i mean attorney general holder said yesterday that he would not hesitate to start going after reporters so we're going to see possibly new york times reporters newsweek reporters a.p. reporters you know dragged into this investigation get them to reveal their sources i mean that that's the logical conclusion to any of this and i think that that's also quite troubling and will have a chilling effect not just for journalists but for a you want who wants to within the government who sees wrongdoing you know wants to speak out it's going to have a chilling effect on that as well yeah very scary and chilling time hopefully won't

go down that path but of course we'll keep following this story gentlemen thank you both for joining us tonight thank you thank. i coming up after the break instead of i read it and now one thousand companies have cut ties with alec but when we come back i can tell you who might try to fill their shoes. well. that's technology innovation all the leaves developments from around russia we've got the future covered.

five thirty am in moscow here r.t. headline it is number two calls on militants across the world to join syria's rebels in their fight against president assad's regime and the statement comes in an undated c.d.o. broadcast a week after washington claimed he'd been killed in a drone strike. european football's governing body condemns the violence around the pole in russia about a trip euro two thousand and twelve championships polish fans a target barrage and supporters before the game by the police in warsaw after it was finished from the hundred fifty poles and twenty four russians were arrested. and while julian assange to each group the supreme court decision on whether it will reopen his extradition case the u.k. holding a building with that potential whistleblowers from speaking up. time now for part two of you ownership of state.

ok guys it's time for you said it i read it right take time to respond to our brilliance of engaging viewer comments from facebook twitter and you tube because when you have something to say i listen now to start off tonight got to say we got a lot of responses out there to our tool time about david brooks last night you guys seemed almost as fired up about it as i was n.s.a. whistleblower thomas drake responded to us on twitter and tweeted brooks posits that some of us are more equal than others and we must submit to our leaders too tempting to lord over others and yeah that pretty much sums it up we thankfully weren't the only ones who noticed the absurdity of this op ed from brooks and i thought that this comment from thomas was a good way of putting it simply if you don't have time to repeat my entire seven minute rant all right now the rest of our comments tonight are kind of amusing i'm not going to lie to first there's a common.