my extremes are no rules barred look at the global financial headlines. trying to stop top secret leaks in the u.s. government congress is trying to get tough on those who spill state secrets but why are lawmakers excluding themselves r t shines a light on the whole poverty. and it was the scandal that rocked washington and the world ronald reagan's administration sold arms to iraq to secretively fund nicaraguan contras twenty five years after the iran contra hearing wrapped up where are the key players from the scandal and how does history judge that. it's friday august third five pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching our t.v. well we begin this friday with congress's attempt to plug government leaks in the

wake of some high profile leagues congress is pushing to prevent classified information from being made public the senate's leaking bill cracks down on government agencies but not all branches are created equal exempt from the bill are members of congress congressional staffers and the executive branch all interesting lead that's where most government leaks reportedly come from so in the quest to crack down on leaks wire and lawmakers getting to the source of the problem to discuss this and more josh gerstein white house reporter for political politico excuse me joined us earlier today. well you know it comes out of the senate intelligence committee which only has discretion over only has jurisdiction i should say over the intelligence agencies so they don't have authority really to regulate the white house to regulate the pentagon the state department or strangely enough they don't even have authority to regulate congress and their own staffers

so you're saying that they can't include themselves even if they wanted to well they could pass legislation that would control all those areas with the possible exception of the white house which is a little more complicated but it would have to go through a bunch of different committees and that would probably take months and months and this is something that the senate intelligence committee panel seemed intent on trying to jam through in pretty short order and why do you think that is well i mean there's been a large outcry in the last couple of months here in washington about a series of very high profile leaks and members of congress are eager to do something about it it's not a purely partisan thing a lot of these proposals have gotten support from both democrats and republicans and the main driver behind doing something about it right now seems to be the senate intelligence committee chairwoman senator dianne feinstein of california although mitt romney the republican presidential candidate has also brought it up and sell you bray brought up dianne feinstein and ironically she is one of the big

star leakers and congress. well i mean i can't say that i know that personally but of course if you were looking for classified information to put into a story some of the first people you would approach on capitol hill would be members of the senate intelligence committee and so it wouldn't be surprising if i found out that some members of that committee and their staff had over the years leak some of the information they're trying to crack down down on right now ok i should say that she is accused of being one of the biggest leakers and that's why some people are finding it ironic that she is now you know presenting this bill but and that's exactly what it is most importantly they don't come from the cia or the f.b.i. or the n.s.a. but would you say it's fair to say that most of them do in fact come from those that are involved in public office. i would say they come either from the hill or they come from the white house or from senior administration officials from your assistant secretaries your secretaries your public affairs people in the government

agencies the truth is that the average rank and file cia officer is not likely to be speaking to a new york times reporter i mean how would the reporter even find out who that person is it seems far more likely that this kind of information comes through the channels of officials who are dealing with these kinds of journalists on a day to day basis ok that being the case that what this bill really change anything. i think it could change things because it makes certain things that go on all the time a lot harder for example there are background briefings that intelligence agencies do for porters there have even been instances where agencies like the n.s.a. tried to give reporters tips on how not to blow the cover of the agency when they're writing stories that kind of stuff would become a lot more difficult for agencies to do under this law i would say it would be impossible but only the director and deputy director of an agency could really speak to reporters on background or off the record and that would just be a very different way of doing business than these agencies do right now and i mean

how i mean you as a journalist i mean how would that affect you know journalists being able to get to their jobs and could that kind of lead to a you know this piece of legislation being a transparency kalar. well it's already happening frankly it's not really a hypothetical there is already a chilling effect there are already a lot of people who may have been more willing to speak in the past being very very careful about what they say and who they talk to and that's in part because of legislation like this but in part because of the criminal investigations that are going on into some of these past leaks you wouldn't want reporters name to be all over your desk calendar or your you know your outlook calendar at this point because you never know when investigators are going to come rummaging through that calendar or through your e-mail looking for your entire history of contact with reporters so maybe this legislation is already having some effect before it even hits the books so do you think you know things like the kill lists and other things that have been made public that some of these things are not going to make it to

the media because because of this crackdown. i think that's very likely that some information won't be coming out and you know there are real questions about whether all these secrets in fact are secrets and which ones of them really need to be kept under wraps and which ones are things that people should be have the right to debate about in a in a democracy and this comes at a time where the government is accused of over classifying documents and you know especially in the wake of wiki leaks and bradley manning a lot of people are saying that too much is being considered classified information so i mean how does that kind of play into this. well i think almost everybody agrees that too much information is classified and too many people have access to it there is something something like five million people that have some type of security clearance in the country that's like approaching two percent of the population and you really can't claim that you're holding these secrets that tightly when five million people can look at them so that's definitely a problem that needs to be worked on and other folks if that look you can't keep

the really secret stuff that you need to keep secret secret when you have a system that makes secret all kinds of things that don't really need to be kept from the public it makes the task of keeping the true secret secret a lot harder. than any other thing that this bill seems to do or or the effect of it is that it might in sales some fear within the government you know within the government oh yeah as i said i think it's already having that effect there's already a concern that look either right now or in the future people are going to be monitoring what we say to reporters so why bother to talk to the journalists at all the other weird thing that happens here is instead of speaking to journalists a lot of these quotes might decide oh i'd rather speak to the folks at non-governmental organizations it doesn't cover foreign diplomats or any kind of the other dinner party conversation that takes place in washington it just mainly cracks down on contact with the media and especially those consultants who are talking heads on the cable news networks or a gotcha what do you think needs to change in this bill to make it more effective i

guess. well i mean they really need to look at do they want to do they want to apply these rules to everyone in the government or do they want to only have it apply to those in the intelligence agencies that's really the critical question that i think congress has to confront and will they apply the rules to themselves all right josh thank you very much that was thank you so much for coming on the show that was josh gerstein he's a white house reporter for politico well today marks the twenty fifth anniversary of the final hearings into one of the biggest scandals to rock american politics it's known as the iran contra scandal but strangely it seems most americans forgot it ever happened and went down during the reagan administration and involved the u.s. selling weapons to iran and funneling money to rebels in nicaragua artes man takes us through a timeline of the scandal. remember that time the united states sold weapons to the iranian government in a weapons exchange for hostages deal in spite of an embargo against selling arms to

iran i'm talking about the iran contra scandal this scandal resulted in the single largest short term drop in approval ratings for any us president in american history so here's what happened we know from declassified documents and what became known as the reagan doctrine that the contras who were in the early one nine hundred eighty s. battling the cuban back sunday in east as in the kit i was were as president reagan once put it the moral equivalent of our founding fathers under the reagan doctrine the cia trained and assisted the contras and other anti-communist groups across the globe this was a challenge for the reagan administration however because the democrat controlled congress at the time opposed any us government involvement in iraq still reagan insisted that no effort should be spared in aiding the contras the events that led to the words iran and contra even being used in the same sentence are the result of a complicated set of super secret operations that would alter the public's perception of president reagan dramatically it was one hundred eighty five iran iraq war when iran secretly requested an arms deal from the united states national

security adviser robert mcfarlane convinced reagan that the deal was a good idea despite an existing embargo against selling arms to iran at the time reagan had also grown frustrated over a stalled hostage situation involving seven americans being held by iranian terrorists in lebanon the deal takes place anyway violating the embargo and consequently striking a deal with terrorists breaking reagan's campaign promise never to do so by the time the public learned that the transaction took place more than fifteen hundred missiles had already been shipped to ron reagan addressed the media denying that the sale of weapons had been a weapons for hostages exchange and later simply claiming that the didn't have any information available to him at the time speculation about the involvement of reagan then vice president george bush and the administration at large was everywhere take a look at the c.b.s. interview from one thousand nine hundred eight then vice president george bush was asked about his involvement. can you reconcile that you were there mr underscored

three separate occasions that it was a swap and told you were doing the most radical elements in iran you were doing straight away with the ayatollah khomeini old what they were doing and not what we were doing and that's the big difference and then i expressed my concerns and reservations about that that it's been testified to under oath by mr poindexter that's not the end of the story though during the arms for hostages deal investigation it was found that only twelve million of the thirty million dollars that the iranians reportedly paid for was accounted for the discrepancy resulted from a diversion of funds aimed at funding the contras in nicaragua enter all over north of the national security council and a national security adviser admiral john poindexter who had full knowledge of the operation both assuming they had reagan support so did the president know the activities were illegal and if not how could something of this scale occur without his knowledge by one thousand nine hundred two george bush's president everyone gets pardoned and history is left to repeat itself we see examples of this today in

the forms of emboldened claims of power by u.s. presidents when it comes to foreign policy or the justification for say warrantless wiretapping or in the events leading to the iraq war many rob lowe r.t. washington but it's out more about the iran contra scandal i was joined by the man that actually broke the story back in one thousand nine hundred eighty four robert perry won the polk award for his coverage at the scandal he explained the origin of the story take a lot. well the work i was doing with the associated press was more focused on oliver north he had his dual portfolio one side was for central america and one side was for a counterterrorism i was focused more on his central america side in covering that and dealing with where the money was coming from to fund the contras we stumbled upon his network which was this is essentially extralegal operation being run out of the white house to get money and weapons to the contras

no later on it turns out that some of that money was being diverted from these arms sales to iran now how would you describe after breaking this story how would you describe the public's response well the public was outraged that especially that president reagan would deal with the iranians who had not that long ago been involved in their own hostage. case in terms of taking american diplomats and other people working at the u.s. embassy in tehran hostage back in one nine hundred eighty and that had been a major issue during the one nine hundred eighty campaign as as president carter tried to win their release and was constantly frustrated making the american government will weaken making him look weak and that was part of why reagan won so decisively in november of one nine hundred eighty. but that the taste of all that

was quite unpleasant still for the american people and the idea that reagan would be secretly funneling weapons to them was something that was hard to believe and i believe we do have a clapper president ronald reagan where he comes out after the story about where he comes out and addresses the public when it's right to take a listen to that. a few months ago i told the american people i did not create arms for hostages. my heart and my best intentions to tell me that's true but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not. so what do you make of president reagan's response they're kind of taken responsibility but not really well i think there was a cover up and the cover up was largely successful some aspects of the story were work supposed to probably by journalists and probably by the work of congress in in bringing an investigation to bear for a while but they don't count it very serious pushback from the white house and the

and the reagan administration which led to the investigation never being seen through there was an effort by a special prosecutor lawrence walsh to get to the bottom of these things he was constantly delayed and by the time he actually began to break through the coverup in one nine hundred ninety one ninety ninety two people were properly bored with the scandal people have forgotten about it and then and then even as he was making progress in late one thousand nine hundred to president george h.w. bush who was who'd been defeated for reelection on christmas eve ninety two turns around and pardons half dozen of the defendants effectively killing the investigation so the trials that what that might have explained much of this in one thousand nine hundred three never took place and the cover up ultimately worked did you expect i mean when you first broke the story that there would be ramifications for the big players you know like like reagan and you know and point x.

or did you expect that there would be some consequences. well you have to remember that back in that time frame one thousand nine hundred it was not that far from watergate the watergate scandal had led to nixon's resignation in in one nine hundred seventy four. there had been a number of laws put in place by congress to control the cia and to control and to limit what the president could do in terms of these kinds of secret activities in a way what iran contra was a push back to that ronald reagan and his vice president george h.w. bush simply didn't want to go along with that they wanted to carry out their own foreign policy and so they found a way to do it sensually circumventing congress circumventing the law. i suppose when you look at the fact that some of what they did would constitute felonies i.e. the arms export control act where people are supposed to report to congress when they sell arms to a country any country but especially one on the terrorist list like iran the fact

that that could be done and there would be fact effectively no consequence is somewhat surprising but i think in retrospect looking back at it what you would you would see of iran contra was it was that middle stage from the period of watergate and the reforms to the more wide open approach that president george w. bush operated with the last decade you could see iran contras as a as a fork in the road and ultimately the united states took the path of allowing the president to do more and more in an unaccountable fashion and going along with that you know some people call the iran contra one of the greatest examples the president over a stepping down drains and bypassing congress i do believe that to be the case. yes i think that was the case the president president reagan effectively. told congress that it was not he was not going to follow the law as if he did not wish to when

some of it was exposed anyway he did a lot of the symbolism and even lying sort of the people around him they gauged in a very aggressive coverup they attacked the investigators quite aggressively. especially using some of their media assets so you had you had basically the fran mork for the the executive branch. becoming unaccountable when it came to congress trying to assert its constitutional role in setting these kinds of laws to constrain the president so yeah i think what you see here was that the case with the president did what he wanted to in defiance of the law and pretty much got away with it and you had mentioned earlier you described it as a fork in the road do you think that's kind of set a dangerous precedent for the way you know business is conducted in washington and how would you say this scandal changed the course of history in the last. well i think basically what you saw here was the failure of the institutions of washington to get control of these things there had been an effort in the seventy's after

watergate after the exposures of cia abuses to bring some constraints on to this process and then you saw the iran contra scandal it was the first test case really of would congress really hold the president to task and and make sure that he couldn't go off in his own direction and the press as well the american press corps was changing here too going from the more aggressive watergate press corps to the to the to the less aggressive press corps we see today and so i think in all those ways the institutions of washington failed to to both enforce the laws see the law was enforced but also in just explaining to the american people what had happened there are still many sections of the scandal that we don't know the full story about or even a chunk of the story there's the really issue when this actually started the report you should had earlier described it as starting in one thousand nine hundred five

which is the conventional wisdom but there was evidence that we kept going back to and as we try to trace the history of this showing that that the shipments actually began in one thousand nine hundred one and according to the assistant secretary of state for the middle east nicholas deleo does when he investigated some it is he found out that it went back to one nine hundred eighty in the reagan campaign when some people in the reagan campaign were making contacts with the iranians off the books so we never got to the bottom of this whether or not this was actually a much bigger scandal that involved essentially trying to fix an american election in one nine hundred eighty we don't really know all that happened in that early phase we do have a glimpse of what happened in that eighty five eighty six timeframe which we have a pretty good history on now but so much of this remains still something outside the historical picture that the. american people have been denied we don't really know who did what and why. and you know and despite the magnitude of this

scandal and the implications of it it seems today most people don't even know what it is or that it ever even happened i mean what do you think about that do you find that shocking and why don't people know more about this. well there was a desire after this period to make ronald reagan into more of an icon. one of the greatest presidents ever was is the way some people put it it really doesn't match the historical record but there was a tremendous effort to name buildings after ronald reagan the name national airport in washington after ronald reagan he was turned into this kind of iconic figure this hero and it was very important for the republicans that in effect they wanted their version of john kennedy and they use ronald reagan to sort of build their own fire brand if you will so i think that was that was a factor that people came away and conventional wisdom was that ronald reagan was a nice guy trying to do the right thing. the evidence may not match that but that's

the that's the sort of the hangover of this period that's what people think that's the conventional wisdom so i think given that there's been a desire to sort of show his side some of the unpleasant history about ronald reagan and just look at the good side. very interesting robert thank you so much for coming on the show that was of robert parry investigative journalist for consorting animals dot com. also ahead of our tale what strippers tampa and mitt romney happened comment i'll tell you in a moment. the talk of american power continues. things are so bad. might actually be time revolution. and it turns out that a popular drink at starbucks has a surprising name greedy and.

mr. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through it's already been made who can you trust no one who is imbue it with the global machinery where we had a state controlled capital it's called. when nobody dares to

ask we do our t. question more. is the state run english speaking russian channel it's kind of like. russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us. at first very much as burned your eyes right right i mean it's like a derivative of actual pepper it's a food product essentially. much stronger than anything it's the by. thousands of times stronger than any kind of ever put.

the g.o.p. is repairing for a trip to tampa earlier this month to nominate mitt romney as their presidential candidate and tampa strip clubs are getting ready for some extra clients you might not know this but tampa is often referred to as the strip club capital of the world and fact buzz feed recently did a story profiling the top five strip clubs in the area here they are the first one moms venus it will set you back twenty bucks for cover but the women are completely nude so that means no boobs you can negotiate the price of a dance and then there is the doll house and listen up young republicans you can get it in the age requirement is eighteen years old this place just recently underwent a one million dollar renovation renovation and there is something for everyone even

all you space nerds there's two thousand one odyssey it has an outer space even this called is also fully nude which means no alcohol but who needs it when you have strippers and space gear to stimulate you and scarlett that why bore strip this place is located in the city part of tampa but it's just a short drive from the sites of the convention and don't you worry ladies i didn't forget about you tampa has a male revue that moves from club to club in fact it was recently made famous by the movie magic mike. you. might. want to think. a channing tatum starred in magic mike and in fact he was actually a stripper in the tampa male revue back in his pre-holiday would days and to prove

my point about strip clubs gearing up for republicans i wasn't kidding the dollhouse has hired porn star porn star a porn star and you see it there a sarah palin lookalike to perform for members of the grand ole party i just hope that the real sarah palin and the lookalike gets a neat while they're both content could be awkward but also fun to watch but you have to wonder why did the g.o.p. pick tampa i know florida is a swing state but they could have chosen orlando or miami so after hearing mitt's acceptance speech something tells me that what's really going on in the minds of those family value candidates is the lure of those strip clubs calling their names to watch some pole dancing. and i'm going to leave you with that the story isn't covered you can check out our you tube channel at youtube dot com slash artsy america we post all our interviews and fall there you can also check out our

website r t v dot com slash usa or follow me on twitter at liz wahl back in half hour. of american power continues. things that are. might actually be time revolution. and it turns out that a killer drink a starbucks says a surprising him. what

drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through it's already been made who can you trust no one. is in view with the global machinery see where we had a state controlled capitalism it's called. when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more. is the state run english speaking russian channel it's kind of like. russia today has an extremely confrontational.