russian airlines. story smartie in moscow at ten pm washington pledges more support for the syrian rebels but russia's foreign minister says that by justifying blasts in damascus the u.s. is indorsing terrorism. the perfect killing streak us media credits the one hundred percent accuracy of america's drone strike helped by a liberal definition of the word terrorists. but still a big discovery in russian woodland police say almost two hundred fifty human fetus is found or over five months old may have been used for legal research. and a heavy weight for julian assange is legal team of the man who died chilean dictator pinochet for human rights abuses joins the world in his fight. in washington next then for today's alona show.

welcome to the lawn a show where you get the real headlines with none of the mersey are going to live in washington d.c. now and i are going to take a look at mitt romney's foreign policy if he even really has one that is outside of saying that obama's is all wrong michael hastings is going to join us and instead of there dianne feinstein is still leading the charge when it comes to investigating leaks but one journalist after another that says that she's actually one of the worst leakers in congress so it's more of the double standard more of the hypocrisy but how do you call out the one that's actually making all the noise david sirota is going to join us for that a lot of all that have more theater night including it does of happy hour but first take a look at what the mainstream media decided to miss. or hasn't taken long for the mainstream media to switch from the mass shooting in

aurora colorado being their lead story back to course the presidential campaign mitt romney took some blows of president obama's foreign policy today and we'll get to that in our interviews tonight but at the end of the day topic number one is still the economy. and the numbers on the economy might spell trouble for the president's reelection campaign the economy has always been the president's killie's heel if you've got a weakening economy three years after the end of the recession who gets the blame two thirds of likely voters say that we could come to me is washington's fault and more people blame the president than anybody else for that two to one people think mitt romney's business background will help him make good decisions as president call me is weakening and the job situation is also getting was. now it's pretty damn obvious that the most important issue of this election is going to be the economy official unemployment is over eight percent the you six measurement has it all the way up to fourteen point nine percent and as you mentioned on

yesterday's show poverty levels are set to hit records since the one nine hundred sixty s. that's also not forget that the housing crisis is still affecting millions of americans but the thing is that whenever it comes to washington our politicians the argument on why they're not getting anything done is there's too much partisan gridlock and therefore the president can't get anything passed that he actually wants to sign but the reality is that it's not partisan gridlock over what actual economic policies are politicians believe that it's all about just not letting the other party win any points so in other words the u.s. economic policy debate that we see playing out in washington is all a sham that's the headline coming from bloomberg today as they took a look at a survey conducted by the university of chicago's booth school of business this is a survey of leading economists from all sides left right and in the middle and it turns out that amongst leading economists there's actually a lot more consensus that you know for example ninety two percent agreed that the

stimulus succeeded in reducing the jobless rate that's not really something you're going here in washington because republicans always want to label obama stimulus as a failure then there is this one that might not make too many people happy but again there is consensus the survey can fire. no economist willing to dispute the idea that the bailouts lowered unemployment then there's a line that we heard from a lot of republicans especially when they were still trying to grasp that nomination the rising gas prices were the president's fault well economists unanimously agree that market factors and energy policy drove the changes so how about the debate over tax policy republicans claim that lowering taxes will lead to more businesses creating more jobs which lead to more consumer spending which then leads to a boost in the economy well this boost poll again could not find a single economist who actually believes that cutting taxes today will lead to higher government revenue and that's even if we lower only the highest tax earners rate these so-called job creators when you put it this way leading economists they're wrong all the time so just because they say something doesn't necessarily

mean that it's going to lead us in the right direction but who do you trust more politicians the people that are constantly looking towards their next election where they can get the campaign cash from or economists those people whose job whose purpose it is to study the economy everyone jordi of economists are agreeing on something that it's kind of hard to figure out why there's so much gridlock in congress as if they're the top economic minds in the country the truth is they're not and i think this survey rightly points out their gridlock is more about partisanship wins and losses there than it is about getting the country back on track and trying to figure out how to make life better for their constituents in fact they're making life even worse they're wasting even more money take last year's debt ceiling debate for example i think that we all rely on pretty well we were on the brink of default because congress just couldn't get along well guess what according to a new report from the government accountability office so far that whole debt ceiling debate has cost us in fiscal year two thousand and eleven alone one point

three billion dollars because creditors get scared when you leave the country at the brink of a default borrowing becomes more expensive and the g.a.o. also says that the one point three billion number will only continue to grow so they. it's a lot guys and the presidential election falls into the same trap because a president is dependent on the congress that's in session and they join in with the finger pointing to but interestingly enough this is never really something that the mainstream media picks up on sure they talk about partisan gridlock they love the ins and outs the name calling the playing of the sound bites over and over again but when will they point to consensus amongst economists and at least ask one set of the one representative how the hell they can answer that two thing is they don't and they won't because they love to keep the game running that's their only material calling a bluff on partisan gridlock that supposedly is over which way we want the country to head economically that's what the mainstream media chooses to miss.

now while the economy is certainly issue number one for the upcoming election they have to remember that foreign policy is actually the area in which the commander in chief has the most direct control or you can just blame things on congressional stand still so if you're running for president for policy is a big one to vote for mitt romney he has no record on it but this week came barak's on a three country trip abroad where he'll visit england israel and poland and today he spoke at the national convention of the veterans of foreign wars so that he finally stepped out of his cold war bubble gives substantive answers on what to do with afghanistan pakistan iran yemen somalia syria china africa you name it well he asked me not so much but let's try to break it down and see if we can get a little bit of a better grasp here discuss this with me is michael hastings rolling stones contrib rolling stone contributing editor and author of the book the operators michael thanks for joining us tonight and. we'll let you know it's going not so well

because i'm not really sure where to start with this i still feel like i don't have that great of a grasp on mitt romney's foreign policy but if there's one thing that i've consistently noticed it's that he's constantly harping on about how this president has been too weak he doesn't want america to be number one in the world and you know a lot of it just kind of seems like old rhetoric that belongs you know in decades past about what do you think. ok so here's the big news coming out of today is essentially that mitt romney's campaign has decided to attack obama over these national security and here's why that's actually important because as you suggested the problem romney has in terms of making the case about foreign policy is that there's just not much difference on a lot of the it's very difficult to draw distinctions between a lot of these foreign policy issues with him and obama for instance on afghanistan recently said he opposed the time to withdraw but now seems to support on iran

though he has these sort of neo con foreign policy advisers to to to kind of be more hawkish than obama had almost say we're going to start bombing them tomorrow on syria you know the bipartisan consensus is you know nobody really really wants to get involved so it's been so so instead as you said there's sort of emotional attacks you know obama doesn't know how to lead he's not. apologizing too much now he still did that but the key is they now focus this it's x. civically and these are national security that's the let me let me get into that right because one of the things that's interesting about the leaks is that so first you have a mitt romney that says of the president and the past he said he would give him an f. grade on his foreign policy right so he says that he has no achievements no successes when it comes to this area then today he is attacking the president for these national security leaks saying that they're all solely for political purposes right

to try to get the president had the question is which one is it does they actually have successes to tout that they want to leak or or does he not have any to get enough. well i mean clearly the one thing wrong the people don't want to talk about is bin ladin and i think from the sort of bipartisan foreign policy consensus in washington president obama's record is consistent for all to consider. so again that that's why it's been so that well for them to find this sort of angle angle of attack now i think going forward what the the other point thing is you know romney is leaving tomorrow for a trip where you're going to israel poland so clearly you know he's not going to iraq or as you can tell or afghanistan so clearly he branding is foreign policy as you said in the in the sort of old school kind of cold war mentality but again we were on the i was on a conference call this morning with a bunch of romney advisers and they didn't even mention afghanistan until the

question answer session when a reporter or rather that. well what about his advisers right now i want to get into more of afghanistan here with you in a second here but in terms of you know if you want to talk about iran if you want to talk about iraq a lot of people would say that romney is taking a couple pages out of maybe the george w. bush book foreign policy as a whole you say does it seem like his most influential foreign policy advisers are right now who are really the people pulling the strings telling him what stance to take what to say. well i mean even strangely the guy he seems to like the most is john bolton who was the former ambassador to the united nations who famously said that you know nations are better if they locked off the top twenty floors of the building here in new york who was one of the major proponents behind the iraq war going back to the late ninety's he was pushing forward he's considered in the conservative his other top foreign policy advisers the guy named dan senor who is

the spokes person for the coalition provisional authority in baghdad during the trip to task for the invasion back in two thousand through. those seem to be the people who he's surrounding himself with you know we just wrote a story again today one of his other foreign policy advisers was involved in the scooter with changing it was involved in the scooter libby legal affair so the dollars it buys and now will is all the actually neoconservative like well it was so much money it's actually quite hard to say and even then it's hard to say too because we don't really know what the differences what policy difference is going to make what different choices they're going to make that obama has made well we don't really know how big of a difference there is between neoconservative policy and our democratic president's foreign policy these days is what you're trying to say i well i go back and forth

on that i think look. there is a difference between you know the neo conservative all. the two thousand three do that. and what obama has been doing in some ways on the other hand. obama's been quite aggressive as well overseas i mean triple the size of the force in afghanistan the drone strikes so it would be hard it's hard pressed to find the area where there is going to be a significant difference that we can tell right now in terms of. the except that may be possibly more likely to go to war with iran but even that i would. get the things that i would really love which i assume are probably too technical here in a campaign as does romney believe in nation building a team more into these targeted operations and counterterrorism but like i said you

know it's probably to thank you all here right now on the campaign trail not to mention a lot of people never actually follow through with what they say on the campaign trail and promises are broken all the time but i just want to get one more question in to before we go of i know you spent time reporting in iraq while you're there what do you make of the situation what's going on right now right we've seen incredible violence as a new offensive by the militants and it's falling apart. look i mean what i've always said about iraq is that essentially. in washington we convinced ourselves that iraq was some kind of syria maybe politically because we've been able to convince americans that that is on some level but i think in reality what we've seen in iraq is the continuation of a sectarian civil war that has been going on since basically two thousand and four intensified in two thousand and five two thousand and six two thousand seven. thousand a spike even further with the american surge and then in two thousand and nine we were told the civil war was basically over everyone that was never the case is the low level of violence low level is relative the level of violence has continued at

both sides still are fighting it out over who's going to control iraq so i think this is the kind of violence. yesterday that we're going to see regularly every few months or so in iraq for years to come and it's exactly what i would say that people like mitt romney republicans and conservatives don't want to talk about and pretend that that doesn't exist anymore doesn't michael thanks for joining us tonight take care. card just ahead tonight find out how the obama administration benefits from not disclosing information that's already been published by wiki leaks and they will talk to david serota about republicans and democrats in congress pushing for more secrecy. publishers that say much good news and maybe even a lot of people in your area with a burka is a game like these on the street with the u.s. in regional knowing she knew diplomacy and the warning from damascus.

one topic we often discuss on this show is the phenomenon of top secret america that includes the ever expanding intelligence community the war in whistleblowers the overclassification of information and it's all designed to make the obscene lee at large national security apparatus seem necessary now just yesterday there were two stories that emerged the highlighted the absurdity of this top secret america and the first involve the conclusion of a court case right here in washington d.c. so this lawsuit involve the a.c.l.u. and the state department and the former had previously asked the latter to disclose twenty three diplomatic cables or i guess really disclose that we see they were

already published by wiki leaks and the plastered all over the internet but the state department refused to fully disclose them in response to for your request about half of them were released in redacted form and the government just simply refused to release the other half and it's happened in spite of foil law which forces the government to release anything that it recognizes is in the public domain and we all know the government has a knowledge of this time and time again here's just one example of hillary clinton talking about the disclosures. this disclosure is not just an attack on america's foreign policy interests it is an attack on the international community. yet in response to the foyer request the state department refused to acknowledge what hillary clinton and others have already publicly admit it so the a.c.l.u. decided to take this case to court and appropriately for a case that completely defies any logic the presiding judge ruled that the state shouldn't have to release them or release them i should say now the legal issue

here is that the a.c.l.u. apparently didn't demonstrate that the cables were already released by wiki leaks did i wake up in the twilight zone a teenager going to done that with their eyes closed this is all really begs an important question why is the state depend partly it bending over backwards just to avoid recognizing the disclosure has no problem talking about the documents when they're denouncing wiki leaks. bradley manning they have no problem talking about them we're discussing regional concerns about iran's nuclear program so i think that the real issue here is about keeping a lid on whistleblowers see if the state department releases wiki leaks documents well then i guess they can't stop their employees from discussing that and we've seen this issue brought up before peter van buren was a foreign service officer who was fired by the state department for his critical writings some of them linked some of the occluded links to wiki leaks cables and as we discussed on the show that case represents an attack on dissent. last week he

received a terminations notice based on a charges and those charges include linking to a.q. leaks on his blog with the state department is trying to terminate me for calling your judgment is in fact or political speech of the very basis of the first amendment the right of people in america to criticize their own government. so it seems that this bizarre refusal to recognize the most widely discussed leak of our time probably does serve a purpose it helps chill criticism that insiders otherwise might want to make public the state department's be dragging makes perfect sense from the spooks point of view especially in light of another report the river least yesterday according to a recently released congressional report the number of people able to access classified information is at an all time high four point eight six million government employees and contractors were eligible for security clearances into two thousand and eleven and the number of top secret security clearances in two thousand and eleven was one point four million and the whole number is up from four point seven million people who are eligible for security clearance in two thousand and ten so

the point is that the national security state keeps growing growing faster the number of teenage girls who want to lose their virginity just to beaver like the number of crazy theories that michele bachmann sounds on a weekly basis like the number of countries that joe lieberman has advocated for invading you get the picture i think the people that are privy to classified information they can basically start their own metropolis though it's no surprise the government engages in all sorts of trickery to keep this growing population from making public outbursts whether it's overclassification an astonishing refusal to recognize what's already out there or even more disturbing the prosecutions are massive security bureaucracies simply can't have people questioning their actions because their budgets depend on it but sadly the courts are playing along. so in light of the ever increasing evidence of the problem of overclassification let's look at yet another development democratic senator and head of the senate intelligence committee dianne feinstein is meeting today to craft legislation to

address the leaks of classified information that's after she doubled down this week and said that some of the most recently may not be coming from the president himself but must be coming from within the ranks of the obama white house here thing is that a lot of journalists out there agree to and feinstein is one of the big it's leakers in congress it's just more double speak more selective outrage but who's going to call her out on it or i caught up with writer as a line dot com and author of the book back to our future how the one nine hundred eighty s. explain the world we live in now david serota and i first asked him what he thinks legislation might actually look like from congress when it comes to leaks i mean i think that we could see more criminal punishment we could see more internal punishment within agencies against people who leak information to journalists i think we could potentially see laws that criminalize the journalists themselves when they when they report on this sort of thing and what's just i think incredibly troubling about this among other things is that what's at issue here is not what's

necessarily coming out and how that should outrage the government now outraged lawmakers but that the leaking itself the leaking about things that should be troubling is that is it's almost a huge mystery what i mean by that in terms of it's a huge mystery act. i mean that you know what has come out of for instance the two week you leaks. traunch of documents is there are all sorts of things that should be raising questions to for lawmakers about particular government policies whether it relates to war or whether lates the civil liberties whether relates to our international relations but instead of those documents creating a debate about those actual underlying issues they've created a debate about whether we should crack down on the leaking itself now i'm not saying that there are questions about leaking national security classified national security information but it's kind of akin to the leaks that happened during

watergate if the reaction has been let's criminalize deep throat instead of let's actually look at the underlying issues that deep throat was was which was publicized now and that's a very valid point i brought up the same thing many times i think the obama kill list and the fact that you know it wasn't that the president is executing american citizens without any due process that was bothering congress but that this might this information may have been leaked to the new york times that in that sense to you know i let's talk about dianne feinstein for example there are a lot of journalists out there i mean a lot of people have been tweeting about this saying that feinstein is actually one of the biggest leakers in congress and so in that sense it becomes kind of ironic because very hypocritical that she's the one that's pursuing this the most aggressively but then i guess nobody really is going to call out feinstein on it directly right nobody is going to point to an exact story and sell out their source so what do you do how do you how do you pin this woman down. it's very difficult and look the leaker the selective leaker never wants to be called the leaker the

leaker wants to preserve his or her ability to continue leaking so it's very difficult and you're right to flag the relationship between journalists and sources as a potential leverage point that senator like feinstein knows that that no reporter is going to point to her office if she's been leaking things because they want to preserve that avenue of information it's a very very difficult process and it's very easy in that process for lawmakers to throw throw stones from glass houses well actually you know those that's interesting as you mentioned that i have a clip here and this happened the other week from representative trey gowdy when they were discussing this within the house and he went on a rant basically saying that we should prosecute journalists and then lock them up because it's not what they all want take a look at this. why not send a subpoena to the reporter put on the front of a grand jury you either answer the question or you're going to be held in concern and go to jail which is what i told all reporters aspire to anyway that i mean all

of that also says barr that the committee chairman all thought that that was the crown jewel when reporters resumes to actually go to jail protecting the source given what i want. to know reporters these days that you think would still really go to jail to protect the source. i know a few i mean i know i know of very very few and i think that the fact that there are so few is a sad commentary on what journalism has become of the journalism has become much more about worshiping power and echoing what power is saying rather than challenging power and questioning powers assumptions i think that that congress person simply has no understanding of the role that the for the state media that journalists are supposed to be playing either no no understanding or basically a disregard for the check on power that journalists are supposed to play and and it's again a sad commentary on what we've come to expect we are supposed to hold up journalists

who are bringing out information and by god that's our information public information whether it's classified or not we own that information we shouldn't be criminalizing journalists who are telling us about our government we should be rewarding them we should be here allies in that sense to how do you see the recent information that emerged that when it comes to the obama campaign and of reporters that want to cover the campaign the campaign has veto power essential over quotes that you want to hear. well here's the issue with that the issue is we have to understand the power relationship is especially between national media outlets and the presidential campaigns when you are with the new york times or n.b.c. news or any major national really international news organization you have more power to demand that the campaigns or your sources speak to you especially or your governmental sources speak to you because the cost of them not speaking to you is very high for them they don't want to have it said in the new york times or on

n.b.c. news that the government the obama administration refused to talk to them unfortunately what we've seen is those national news organizations not being willing to use that fundamental power on behalf of their audience which they should they the new york times n.b.c. news should be going to the obama campaign saying listen we want your quote on the record if you do not give us a quote on the record based on our questions we will put into our story that you refused to answer our questions and if the obama campaign says that they're not going to answer that or they're not going to answer unless they have veto power over what's published then the national media organization should have the wherewithal to to walk away and have the campaign pay the consequences for that but i wonder you know i think it would be up to more than just a few national media organizations or as the new york times wouldn't you have to have all journalists kind of take this pledge to say that they won't stand for it because you know in this light sure some of the big wigs might say that we want to

have but then there's always going to be hunger reporter the once the access the once a story first who just might be willing to say yes. well i certainly think there should be a standard and there used to be standards more uniform standards in journalism where this kind of thing if it was allowed at all there was at least some transparency i mean there was a i read about how very and i think it was germany when this happens when this kind of relationship is requested we get to edit our quotes before you publish them that minimum readers were entitled to know that that relationship had been established would be a little parent that a call that says this was the the conditions in which these these quotes were given readers right now don't know anything so it's really what really raises the question is who are the journalists in this case loyal to are they will to their readers or they will to the government or loyal to their own inside access and what is that access really were. all very important questions that need to be asked to and light of all of this in light of the obama administration's foreign whistleblowers in light of the congressional investigation into leaks and i you

know just the relationship between the press and the government these days david thanks so much for joining us tonight thank you. i just ahead of the show tonight on fox news host grills kids that obama and job creation for details and too little time al talk about the town hall debate that's once again triggering the thank you to bazil out of the street to find out what people in washington d.c. . a scam.