but. 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 are shines a light on this 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 his head how does history judge that. well how much is your cyber safety worth that's what the government is currently trying to figure out in efforts to crack down on cyber attacks details coming up on how much it would cost to cyber proof the u.s. . it's

friday august thirty pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall 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 late 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 josh gerstein white house reporter for politico joined us earlier today and touched on the purpose behind the bill take a listen. 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 and sell you bret 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 vegas 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 a effect of 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 to my side 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 well today marks the twenty seventh anniversary of the final hearings into one of the biggest scandals to rock american politics it's known as the iran contra scandal and it went down during the reagan administration and involved the u.s. selling weapons to iran and funded funneling money to rebels in nicaragua but how many people remember what it is laurie harkness 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 remember it was about what was it about to remember. nuclear weapons i believe iran is but the army going in and trying to do for 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 were 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 in 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. so strangely it seems most americans for god it ever happened artes man iraq below will refresh 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 u.s. 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 sometime 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 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 hostage swap and told you were doing the most radical elements in iran and you were dealing 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 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. that's out more about the iran contra scandal i was joined by the man that actually broke that story and nine hundred eighty four robert perry won the polk award for his coverage of the scandal he explained the origins of the story take aleck. 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 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 done pleasant 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 clip of president ronald reagan where he comes after the story about where he comes out and addresses the public when it's right 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 still 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 had 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 nine hundred seventy four. there had been a number of laws put in place by congress to control the cia into 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 in the reforms to the more wide open approach that president george w. bush operated with the last decade you can 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 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 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 symbolising and even lying so that the people around him they gauge in

a very aggressive cover up they attacked the investigators quite aggressively. especially using some of their media assets so you had you had basically the framework 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 that was robert parry investigative journalist for consortium news dot com. on the wake of some high profile government leaks from wiki wiki leaks to the so-called kill list the government is trying to put an end to what all and now the pentagon is pumping money into ramping up cyber security according to the n.s.a. general keith alexander one trillion dollars goes down the drain each year due to

cyber crime so is is this a way to justify yet another arm of the ever expanding military industrial complex to talk more about this i was joined by john simpson privacy project director for consumer watchdog we first discussed they suppose that one trillion dollar price tag for cyber security. 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 an 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 chat 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 don't i think it may be 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 small. criminal activity that goes on the scans and that sort of thing and the underlying fundamental safety of 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 all was 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 seem to have been a step in the right direction a lot of amendments have 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 mindset of being at the cyber security that they have priority that they kind of gave in to the chamber of commerce because they didn't like the bell what i think that's what i think that's what happened i mean the republicans essentially completely gave in to the chamber of commerce i mean a was it was it had genuine bipartisan support senator collins from maine as 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 cybersecurity bill should be we should also mention that it did have the backing of the white house 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 the 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 are 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 and we're in iran where there was a virus called starts net which probably the united states and the israelis 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 yet mention this balance and that this cyber security bell 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 creating it to the digital pearl harbor i mean can we see more and more legislation that kind of test said that that is not balance and could be a threat to our privacy like this i like self 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 a power to us that send water and sewer systems and that sort of they're all the nowadays controlled by networks by the internet that was john simpson privacy project director for consumer watchdog there is a sneak peek of the stories we're working on next week while millions of americans continue to ride the wave of unemployment back here in the nation's capital where jobless rates are at its lowest lawmakers continue to turn a blind eye so why is congress playing the wait and see game with the economy plus facial recognition could be coming to a town near you the f.b.i. is working on a program to collect the profiles of nearly one hundred million americans for the

next generation identification program well tell you the expected launch date and how it could affect you and what if a government spy agency had the power to mine information ordinary americans from any government that a base well tell you about the biggest spy program currently in the works but that's going to wrap it up for this hour from our answer as we cover check out our you tube channel you tube dot com slash artsy america can also had to our website arts he comes last usa and you can also follow me on twitter outlet as wall we'll be back here at ten. the climate of american power continues. are things in our country so bad that might actually be time for a revolution. and it turns out that a popular drink of starbucks has a surprising him greedy and well.