tonight on our two some call them heroes but to senator joe lieberman government leaders are villains that deserve to be punished in the worst way i'll tell you all about his crusade to silence whistle blowers for good. and marching for a cause thousands of new york city protesters hit the streets in opposition to the n.y.p.d. stop and frisk policy a look at the law that has angered so many ahead. heads monday june eighteenth seven pm here in washington d.c. i'm christine frizz out here watching our t.v.

let's begin tonight with a subject that's near and dear to our hearts here at r t america the subject of whistleblowers we have of course cover the bradley manning case extensively and despite more and more people being arrested and convicted for speaking up there are some who think we're going to easy on whistleblowers in this country here's senator joe lieberman on fox news sunday and i think we're on a slippery slope where people think there's no accountability. and we want to change that i think we've got to change the law that's applied here the last person to be convicted of a crime for leaking to the media was more than twenty five years ago we're still using a nine hundred seventeen as to be an object that requires some showing of intent and knowledge that will leak would harm the security of the united states but chris . well that espionage act has actually been used to charge the following people thomas drake is one of them so my liebowitz stephen ginn kim.

of course bradley manning who we've mentioned jeff sterling and john kerry. so i want to talk a little bit more about this with trevor ten the activist with the electronic frontier foundation hey there trevor francis get your reaction to senator lieberman's comments over the weekend. well as you said there is actually six people that have been charged by the obama administration under this law and while nobody's been convicted a few people already pled guilty under the espionage act and now i mean there's a problem there's a few problems with joe lieberman statement first he's saying that that any leak of classified information should be a crime no matter the weakness and tensions motivations for whether or not it it harm national security now what it was proposing became law was cited the freedom of the press considerations and the public's right to know every almost every single administration official the last thirty five years would be in jail you know

we have a classification system which is. loaded in and we're going to the point where there's seventy seven million documents classify and. foreign policy is some is some class fied and. without being able to tell. remember to get its message out and the public would never know what the government's doing so what you. use and surely most all governments just. coming out with information that could be helpful to see how it works and will prevent the press doing its job yeah i think that's a really important point that you bring up when we talk about what senator lieberman wants to do he wants to take this past just people who leak classified information he wants to take it to people who also leak anything considered harmful to national security but i think it's an important you bring up classified

information you know usually we think the government only classifies the most you know extremely secretive sensitive information it turns out the government presence can classify just about anything so i think it's really important to distinguish those two notions and just to show how far reaching what senator lieberman is proposing but what about this because you know as bad as the espionage act is it at least says it has to show that the person violating this these provisions shows intent that the person actually wants to cause harm to the u.s. what do you think about the fact that lieberman wants to take even a step further and say forget about intent. yeah well it would stop any sort of was a floor from coming forward to the press no matter what the situation and and it would be really just for both the public's right to know in terms of us rights under the first amendment you know we have the espionage act now that was written

in world war one it was it tended to to get spies for americans and recently it's been turned into this tool that can somehow go after a week or so the government leaked to the press in the public interest they don't sell their information to other countries or anything like that and you know it's still an open question whether this espionage act really get used you know that you know there's only been actually one conviction a couple other people pled guilty and you know it's and it wasn't meant to go after people just for classified information and it shouldn't because like i had mentioned earlier of the government for actually forty or fifty years has had a secrecy system in which they classified virtually everything foreign policy related and you know the government doesn't even dispute this when president obama came into office he talked about the book classification system and how everything was over classified and how he was administration worked the classify things that a higher rate and start with the presumption of declassification but unfortunately he's gone the opposite route and he has ended up like every other other

administration for him i think that's a good point i mean president obama has not only called for last classifying but he's called the for much more transparency he promised that to the people to the press to talk about this gap in his promises and in the action that we've seen over the last three and a half years. you know coming into office president obama said some great things about transparency and classification and freedom of information act saying that his government was going to completely transform the way they were used that that the secrecy system was no longer going to be used to hide embarrassing information or corruption or crimes and that he was going to completely overhaul it so you know the only thing that was kept secret were actual secrets unfortunately we've seen in classic asian girls to its highest levels ever as i mentioned before two thousand and ten there was seventy seven million documents classify that was a forty percent increase over the year before and we've seen him do other administrations have done which is deplore leaks and say you know we don't. it's

a sort of action but unfortunately mr issue is this justice department process six prosecution a.s.p.i. checks now that's more that's double the amount that. as i said many administrations have to for weeks you know it's been the policy not to bring prosecutions there's a simple way to deal with leakers if you're ministration doesn't like them you can fire them they don't have to be prosecuted you know the class system is made by the order was made by congressional that there shouldn't be a system of punishment where people go to jail for years on end when they do what every other commiseration official has been doing for decades for a half century i think that's an important point and i think that's a question that a lot of people raise when it comes to whistleblowers when it comes to you know people who want to express that something's going wrong but you know people you know who tend to agree with the joe lieberman's of the world would say you know

what we need a policy to deal with what's happening you know when there's there's secrets out there so i guess my question trevor is is there a line that can be moved a goal post that can be moved that you know don't say i'm going to arrest anyone that leaks but but is there a better way to say you know what you can't leak you know troop movements and things that should absolutely becomes you know stay remain secret but that everything should be under the sun probably oh yeah that's the problem with this whole debate this whole. this whole debate of. you know secrecy in general when the stories came out the new york times about the cyber attacks. and the kill let us know what the congress wasn't moving for what it is really important issues instead they're all well you know ok we should put it on sort of taking them down you know these are really important issues the american public deserves to know about and unfortunately congress went the other way so you know the the basic thing

that they could do is reform the secrecy system when there are less secrets and they're under tighter control they won't be this much we won't have these controversies as much and it would be a much easier system for both the government to implement and for the public to get behind and that's actually what obama proposed when he was first in office if he actually both of those plans would be a lot better place right now you know and when we talk about sort of modern day whistleblower certainly one of the most prominent ones that comes to my mind is bradley manning quite a few people would say that you know private first class bradley manning needs to be have an example made out of him because if we don't more people will leak government and military secrets that should be harmful to u.s. security what is your response to that. again that's the kind of hide the ball technique that the government is using under this argument you know we need more

secrecy now set of more transparency in the bradley manning situation the government clearly at fault i mean they have you know there's four point two million people classified clearances those countries there's you know the secrecy has been soaring for the last ten years where everything is fine you know even even people with the highest clearance in the country top secrets there are over one point four billion people with access and the computer systems the browser bradley manning allegedly had access to were accessible by hundreds of thousands of people even allegedly the iraqi military and it was very easy to get information off of these systems and you know ironically those cables that describes how china had infiltrated america's class classified networks years before bradley manning allegedly did and probably had access to the cables already so the government should concentrate on securing its own systems and making sure that there's less

secrets and that the secrets that they need absolutely to protect should be protected but all of this other bloated broken secrecy is stern that is going on right now just ends up backfiring on them and creating situations like this kind of program try to find out how we got to this point how do we get from a place of you know daniel ellsberg considered by so many in this country you know the one behind the pentagon papers so many see him as a hero how we got into a place where lakers are now considered to be villains. well it's important to remember four years ago dan do you always burke assume the same way he was betrayed as a true traitor by richard nixon. and they tried to discredit him then just like people are trying to discredit bradley manning now and you know you always were unfortunately wasn't acquitted hughes this case was thrown out because the president of the united states had directed people to break into his psychiatrist's

office and bribe the judge with a job with f.b.i. director and you know it took a while for generals to see again the status he has today you know is that it's service and hopefully people will see bradley manning in that light. but you know unfortunately when you're in the heat of the moment the government will do anything you can to kind of betray a leader as some somehow unpatriotic or you know un-american that is certainly a word that we hear so often. affiliated with these cases trevor tam always good to have you on the show travers an activist we have with the electronic frontier foundation thanks for having me well four decades ago yesterday police here in washington arrested five men for breaking into the office of the democrats and democratic national committee at the watergate hotel little did most americans know it would become a scandal so big it would take down a president had the time those arrests happened with little fanfare and soon after

president nixon was reelected it's what slowly unraveled after his reelection that led to what we now simply call watergate otherwise known as the worst political scandal in history the burglary was one thing but what's not often discussed is the amount of money nixon raise just before hand about twenty million dollars which would equal about one hundred ten million today much of that from large corporations illegally and all of that done so early on to avoid disclosure rules that would soon go into effect. now much of that came out of the hearings on capitol hill and after watergate twenty corporations were criminally convicted for illegal campaign finance activities congress then passed sweeping legislation campaign finance reform that would remain in place for years the wounds of watergate you could say were deep enough both lawmakers and the american people felt action was necessary but fast forward to today and many of those lessons have been forgotten the law is not only done away with but made much worse by the

supreme court decision in the case of citizens united president obama criticized it and for once senator john mccain agreed here he is on n.b.c.'s meet the press and i think there will be those associated with the worst decision of the united states supreme court in the twenty first century. those are harsh words and as we reflect on the watergate anniversary and how far we've come since then i think a better question is to ask what have we learned some would argue nothing at all degen of the washington post writes of four decades later there's little need for fear to fund raising or secret handoffs of cash many of the corporate executives convicted of campaign finance crimes during watergate could now simply write a check to their favorite super pac or if they want to keep it secret to a compliant nonprofit group corporations can spend as much as they want to help their favorite candidates no longer prohibited by law from spending company cash on

elections now watergate gave us a few things the first and only president to resign from office a bright light shone on hard core reporting and investigative journalism like work done by washington post reporters bob bob woodward and carl bernstein and of course of gave us the word gate attached to every modern day scandal. well today millions of dollars go to prop up campaigns of would be office holders in secret and it is allowed so i think it's important when we talk about campaign finance scandals now to consider that one of them was signed sealed and delivered by our third branch of government the united states supreme court. switching gears now to the streets of new york city yesterday they were absolutely packed it was father's day of course several people holding hoping to send a message to mayor michael bloomberg and police commissioner ray kelly hoping to end the policy known as stop and frisk take a look at the march and notice that it is very quiet.

so this is what happened after the march it did get a little louder but the other march yesterday was a silent march in the crowd was estimated to be as large as fifty thousand people who took part members of the n.w.a. c.p. the a.c.l.u. the national action network and thousands of people concerned about a policy in which the new york police are not only allowed they're encouraged to stop behaving to stop people who are behaving in a way they deem suspect well guess what last year more than six hundred eighty five thousand people were stopped and eighty eight percent of them were innocent guess what fifty three percent of them were black and thirty four percent of them were left so the racial profiling aspect of this is unquestionable the march was a success but it did turn chaotic as you saw there with some protesters clashing with police and i want to talk about this with george martina's new york congressional candidate hey there george talk to me what was your impression of the

march how did it go overall. overall the march was an incredibly important statement on behalf of fathers parents and people of new york city who demonstrated with the power of silence and fifty thousand is an incredible number on a sunday that we stand in solidarity against these barbaric police practices that target our children. i wasn't i'm not sure of you were there towards the end it was a silent march it was a huge thousand march but towards the end there were some clashes with police often when i understand the police sort of routed the protesters in several different directions and chaos ensued what was your impression about that the march was beautiful people were absolutely respectful every member of the community labor like you mentioned people were out there and it was just a beautiful celebration but it felt like at the end the police there seemed to be some sort of provocative spirit the police were giving very chaotic directions

pushing protesters into the streets that protesters didn't want to walk into creating bottlenecks situations i've actually been floor confronted myself when i was with my child is that at the end of the march i just think that some police maybe they were pent up seeing that many people in silence protesting their actions that they wanted to cause a little havoc with the george you are with your child yesterday at the march peacefully protesting and you said the police confronted you what happened. the end of the march where again a lot of folks kind of ran into the police wall and were sent different directions it was father's day i was with my son celebrating father's day and joining in solidarity we attempted to exit the parade route at the very end into central park to enjoy the rest of the day when a police officer put his hands on my chest and pushed me back into the streets upon

which i let him have it we're not going to take that treatment on father's day. and especially when my son was actually on my shoulders that this police officer touched me and pushed me back into the crowd and it was on it's unacceptable behavior. let him go and some of the details here about stop and frisk we put up some of the statistic this is if the six from last year two thousand and eleven statistics eighty eight percent of the six hundred eighty five thousand people stopped were innocent why do police in new york say you know they're looking for when they just randomly stop these people who by the way happen to be almost all black and latino. they say lies let's just be clear about it whatever they say is a lie they say that stop and frisk reduces crimes there's no statistical evidence for that and what they say is that they're looking for guns that kill people it is true guns can be instrument to kill people but it's not true that they are getting

guns off the streets by randomly stopping every black or latino kid that is not true there is no direct connection to that so they are skewing some sort of narrative that's based on lies to encourage people to believe that they're doing the right thing but we know by living this experience that they are absolutely sending a chill of terror down the spine of every person in our community whether older or younger and today i just met a grandmother who said her four year olds are afraid when they see the police there's something wrong with that's what's what's growing in our city yeah police are supposed to of course as we now serve and protect i know you've been you've been out campaigning for office have you met anyone george that you know has been stopped and frest and if so you know what was the reason they were given. just personal experiences i've been stopped and frisked before we call that stop and frisk just twenty years ago when the numbers were lower just yesterday after

a rally after folks saw me let in the police know that we will not stand for that because i think it's important that every parent stand up and use their voice when they see something say something especially when it's at the hands of the police i met a grand grand a great grandmother yesterday who told me a story that she was recently stopped and frist coming out of her public housing development and she thought she felt like she was violated because they aggressively pat her down and accusing her of doing things that she obviously wasn't doing and she didn't have any charges filed against her and this is something that we see too often in our city and the biggest problem is the mayor and police chief police commissioner kelly don't want to acknowledge the reality and they keep lying to the public and we're not going to stand for this anymore yeah it's so interesting to us i mean when you look at it i think on every level it seems like it's a little bit unconstitutional that this could happen but if police were finding you

know even that fifty percent of the people that they stopped in for as you know had weapons or had some sort of plan in there you know what we're planning to do something bad but the fact is that eighty eight percent of people are one hundred percent innocent with those numbers with those statistics how can they justify continuing this program. even worse they say that their goal is to get guns off the streets their own statistics tell us that they get one percent of out of all of the stops that they do one percent of the stop over almost eight hundred thousand people they got eight hundred guns off the streets well that's like trying to do surgery with a chainsaw what we what we really are seeing is the deficiency of the police's own tactics and their inability to actually create a relationship with the community they will prove their ability to do police work so it's easier to just discriminate target our children and arrest people who live

in these communities who are targeted with low income cuts to public education and now we have police who are targeting our young people this is unacceptable and their own statistics tell them that they're lying and of course yesterday's march kind of hoping to send a message to police commissioner ray kelly as well as mayor michael bloomberg it's interesting mayor michael bloomberg has said publicly that he would like to end the stand your ground law this is of course the law made famous in the shooting death of florida teen trayvon martin and yet this law the stop and frisk law is not all that different you're you're basically giving police giving non police officers even with stand your ground the ability to stop people only presumed to be suspect talk about that kind of gap between opinions there. right just consider this ten years ago there were ninety thousand stop and frisks and the percentage of all those who were stopped is the about the same and ninety percent

were innocent. thirty four percent african-american and thirty some odd percent latino now that number is increased almost a million and it's the same exact percentage and we haven't seen a decrease in crime how my sides are at the same level that they've been and the reality is people are hurting in communities so we see as the mayor tried to use fancy language very flawed statistics to prove their case and they'd like to talk about this of these other laws that are out there i think to muddy the waters these are what we call weapons of mass distraction the reality is people in neighborhoods in new york city are being targeted and they look like me they look like my son they look like remarkably graham they look like trayvon martin and people finally had enough of a nuff and this is it's good for us that mayor bloomberg is out and police commissioner commissioner kelly is out but what's more important is that we start sending a message to all of the captains and lieutenants and and commanders of the police

that they work for the people of the city of new york they do not work for people who would otherwise than them to violate our civil rights and that's one of the reasons why we're calling for aggressive hearings from the department of justice to actually start having federal oversight into these discriminatory practices on the hands at the behest of the n.y.p.d. was only an overwhelming turnout yesterday a turnout that that did send a message to anyone who saw what was going on that people are upset about this policy but i'm wondering if you're heard anything that has been proposed because certainly too many guns on the streets of new york too much violence on the streets of new york is the business of the mayor and the police commissioner have you heard any good ideas you know put out there put forth that would eliminate stop and frisk and perhaps be much better than it. well clearly the guns buyback programs work i think there's evidence that when we invest in the city funds to be able to

buy back guns with phenomenas none of those turn ins that that actually works to reduce guns off the street to get guns out of streets you buy them back and i think there's great success there the city hasn't funded that and so it's easier again to target our children but the reality is when one hundred percent of everyone who stop doesn't have a gun well again you're violating the spirit of the hopefulness of protecting the community by getting guns off the street by targeting in this very terroristic way just innocent people so gun buyback programs work we know that youth development programs work police athletic league ideas that keep young people safe in unsafe environments doing productive things work to be able to help them stay out of trouble but what we're saying is that most of our kids are not in trouble but they're running into the police and the police make them feel like they're in trouble that's a very dangerous system that's

a very dangerous trend in our city and and i'm and i'm absolutely happy that parents are finally standing up martinez new york congressional candidate thanks for joining us thank you. all right let's switch gears now to the issue of guantanamo bay the treatment of prisoners there has a long been a stain on the u.s. reputation which is probably why a president obama promised time and time again while campaigning that he'd shut it down and would do so in his first year in office well that hasn't exactly happened so how do people feel about that while lori garver has with the resident are not asked that question to some people on the streets of new york city. even though president obama promised to close the prison at guantanamo bay or get him out it remains open why this week let's talk about that and i think the logistics of closing it to prevent that president obama from making it happen do you think it was a mistake for him to make such

a promise no i don't i think that. i think he's i think you're still committed to the policy he's trying to roll the rock and it's a tough rock to roll i say that i'm ready to. us. you should deal your own you huge first and then you will deal. with the world after a get is one time obey just an example of our imperialism of course it is an example you know because you want to impose democracy in some countries and you're not even able to impose democracy in your own country i think it's an issue i think it's hard for us to you know as being this sort of promoter of human rights while also keeping people in prison for as long as they have without any trials or any any chance that us just as applied to them so yes i think it's an issue do you think it's fair for us to hold them indefinitely absolutely not so what does that say about the u.s. . says we're in a difficult position right now that make it ok to hold people without knowing if

they're guilty of anything probably not it says if you guys want to control the world actually. and he shouldn't. and i don't know going to know we're going to send him away shouldn't exist actually some of them are very guilty and how do you know that. they released some of them and apparently they turned committed more outrageous so is the issue then what to do with these people if the prison is close . yes where we just are none of the states wants to take them so we send them to yemen saudi arabia and they all escape and join the forces account so i don't think the president of the united states really has the power to close guantanamo i mean what would you have to do with the people who are there yes i have no idea which is why i'm not in politics but that is the question right now it's a lot easier to say.