trying to stop top secret leaks in the u.s. government and 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 hypocrisy. and it was a scandal that rocked washington and the world ronald reagan's administration sold arms to iran to secretively fund nicaraguan contras twenty five years after the iran contra hearings wrapped up where are the key players from the scandal and how does history judge them. and how much is your cyber safety worth and what's the government what the government is currently trying to figure out and effort to crack down on cyber attacks details on how much it would cost to cyber proof the u.s. . it's

friday august third six pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching our t.v. . we begin this friday with congress's attempt to plug government leaks in the wake of some high profile leaks 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 interesting legal that's where most government leaks reportedly come from so in the quest to crack down on leaks why aren't lawmakers getting to the source of the problem to discuss this and more josh gerstein white house reporter for politico 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 to 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 seems 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 himself you brett brought up dianne feinstein and ironically she is one of the biggest leakers and congress. well i i mean i can't say that i know that personally but of course if you are 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 leaked some of the information they're trying to crack that 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 mostly supportively 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 reporters there is 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 without a fact you know journalists being able to do their jobs and could that kind of lead to a you know this piece of legislation being a transparency kalar. well it's it's already happening frankly it's not really a hypothetical there's 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 the

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 if 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 on you know especially in the wake of of wiki leaks and bradley manning a lot of people are saying that too much is being considered classified information and 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 have said 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 and another thing that this bill seems to do you are already effective it is that it might instill some fear within 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 folks might decide oh i'd rather speak to 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 network or a judge and 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 that's how it 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 and i went down during the reagan administration and involves the u.s. selling weapons to iran and funneling money to rebels and nicaragua but how many

people remember what it actually is lower laurie harf and his take that question to the streets of the big apple. western media would have you believe that iran is some sort of evil enemy so do they not remember their run contra scandal of one thousand nine hundred sixty this week let's talk about that have you ever heard of the iran contra scandal. sorry no i haven't no you haven't i stated no i have not heard. something big no yes yes do you member it was about what was it about you remember. nuclear weapons i believe iran is but the army going in and trying to go the oil is and it was about all over north was taking the funds from selling arms to iran to use to fund the contras. in.

nicaragua you got it and now we make iran out to be the bad guy but here we were exchanging arms with them why do you think the world is ok with that well because america is a hypocrisy do you think that the world knows that this is a apocryphally. i guess we know a little bit about it but sometimes i find us to be very naive and we are not really enough to wear over everything that's going on out there they were in a war with iraq so you know we we thought that they were they were they good relative good guy. and iraq was the you know the bad guys you know it's just the whole it's ridiculous if we change our definition of it who's good and who's bad to suit our needs whenever doesn't that kind of make good and bad relative and meaningless absolutely it's almost thirty years ago so there and thirty years someone can go from being an ally to an enemy well unfortunately that happens yeah

so we should probably be more careful with whom we give arms to that is a very good observation but then again you never know which side of the regime you fall on when you support something in. one of the issues of u.s. foreign policy is they've always picked sides which they did in vietnam they did it in other places and sometimes they were successful sometimes they weren't whether or not people remember the iran contra scandal the bottom line is the media certainly seems to have a selective memory that suits whatever message they'd like to promote. the strange feeling at sam's most americans forgot it ever happened r.t. is manual that it will fall out well or fast our memory now and take 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 address the media denying that the sale of weapons had been a weapons for hot. just 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 an honest to swap and told you were doing the most radical elements in iran you were doing straight away with the ayatollah khomeini told 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 has 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 and her 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 nine hundred ninety 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. and it's not about the iran contra scandal i was giant by the man that actually broke the story back in nineteen eighty-four robert perry won the polk award for its coverage of the scandal he explains the origin of the story take a look. well the work i was doing with the associated press was more focused on oliver north he had this dual portfolio one side was for central america and one side was for a counterterrorism i was focused more on his central america side and even in covering that in 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 taking 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 in the

in 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 timeframe one thousand nine hundred it was not that far from watergate the watergate scandal had led to nixon's resignation in in one thousand and 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 the nick and accountable fashion and some are going along with that you know some people call the iran contra one of the greatest examples the president over a stepping down dreams and bypassing congress i do believe that to be the case. yes i think that was the case the president president reagan affectively. 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 dissembling and even lying. to the people around him they gauge in a very aggressive coverup they attacked the investigators quite aggressively. specially using some of their media assets so you had you had basically the framework for the the executive branch. becoming unaccountable when he 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 into science of the law and pretty much got away with it. and that was robert parry investigative journalist for consortium news dot com. from the wake of some high profile government leaks from wiki leaks to the so-called kill list the government is trying to put an end to it all and now the pentagon is pumping money into ramping up cyber security according to n.s.a. general keith alexander one trillion dollars goes down the drain each year due to

cyber crime so is this a way to justify spending and yet another arm of the ever expanding military and austria complex john simpson privacy project director for consumer watchdog joins us now to weigh in. welcome john so one that trillion dollars same day incredible figure there is that really how much is wasted each year. well it's supposed to be a worldwide figure and it's a figure that's been put forth by by some companies that are in fact have a have a vested interest in in making that claim other companies that sell computer security equipment and that sort of thing. i suspect that the numbers may. be eyecatching it's very difficult to know exactly but the fact of the matter is is that even if those numbers are and over estimate there is a serious cyber security problem in the country it's something that we need to be

doing something about but could there be a challenge possibility i mean on the lower seeing where the numbers are coming from and if you know of it being blown out of proportion. well i think it maybe was blown out of proportion partly as impetus to try and get the cyber security act through the senate. and you know that that that is quite possible those numbers you know they catch they catch ones eyes and and people think about it but there's really a distinction between the sort of smooth criminal activity that goes on the scams and that sort of thing and the underlying fundamental safety of. our our various networks the power grid. our banking structure and system in the way money gets moved around those networks are very vulnerable and something does need to be doing done about that and the problem always is whether you put appropriate

computer security in place without going too far and overstepping people's privacy rights the bill that was just making its way through the senate seemed to have been a step in the right direction a lot of amendments had been offered that did provide privacy protections but it was defeated largely because the u.s. chamber of commerce thought that some of the security standards that were being placed on business were too onerous so i do think that instead of the the cyber security that being a priority that they kind of gave in to the chamber of commerce because they didn't like the bell well i think that's what i think that's what happened i mean the republicans essential e completely gave in to the chamber of commerce i mean a was it was it was it had genuine bipartisan support senator collins from maine is republican senator lieberman of course an independent former democrat they were the

major sponsors of the bill and there had been a genuine effort i think to get to something that offered meaningful security protections for the fundamental. infrastructure we're talking about the power grids that are really from endlessly managed by computers or sewer systems or banking systems wall street that kind of thing and it is necessary to have protections there the fact that it was essentially stopped because of the republicans wanting to go along with with the chamber of commerce position i think was unfortunate in this case and this cyber security bill said be we should also mention that it did have the backing of the white house filed one of the only cyber bills are the only cyber bill that did have the backing of the white house but do you see cybersecurity as remaining a top priority yes i do indeed and again the important thing is that

you come up with a system that has meaningful protections but that that data is used for security purposes not for other purposes that would invade people's privacy and i think of a balance can be struck where that is indeed quite possible and from everything i understand about the bill that did not make it through because of the republican filibuster. that balance appeared to have been. struck there were amendments offered by senator franken for instance that were very important and very privacy friendly so the fundamental problem is that we. or very vulnerable and we've got to do something about it with our basic infrastructure the fact that this sort of thing goes on has been demonstrated by some of the activities for instance in or in iran where there was a virus called staats net which probably the united states and the is really is put into iranian computers to sort of screw up their nuclear experiments and so

this kind of cyber warfare if you will is happening right now and virtually everyone who looks closely at it realizes that our networks simply are not protected adequately and you had mentioned this balance and that this cyber security bill was one of the only ones to achieve that balance but it didn't pass but you know when you hear people calling you know saying cyber threats are are equating it to the digital pearl harbor i mean can we see more and more legislation that kind of tips that is not balance and could be a threat to our privacy alexis like sopa and other other pieces of legislation that have been more controversial. i think there can be a real danger when you speak in sort of you hype everything up and you throw figures around like that it's costing a trillion dollars a year two hundred fifty billion dollars in the united states i think those kinds

of things. sometimes cause people to tune out and say that's just really unbelievable and i think if you have a factual discussion of the situation you do reach the conclusion that again some of our fundamental networks things that we use every day things that you know send the power to us that send water and sewer systems and that sort of they're all the nowadays controlled by networks by the internet and there needs to be some reasonable protections of those networks and a lot of hype doesn't doesn't help make that case so it may be that the supporters of the bill by speaking with that sort of hyperbole of talking about we're on the verge of a pearl harbor may have hurt themselves right as a very interesting jon thank you so much for coming on the show and weighing in

that was john simpson thank you harvest the project director for consumer watchdog and that's going to wrap it up for this hour but for more on the stories we covered you can check out our you tube channel it's youtube dot com slash r t america posts all of our interviews in full on our you tube channel you can also check out our website at r t dot com slash u.s. air where producers are busy working on stories that we don't always have time to get here on the air or you can follow me on twitter at liz wahl we'll be right back here at eight pm see that. decline of american power continues. things in our country so bad might actually be time for a revolution. and it turns out that a popular drink of starbucks has a surprising him radio.