drones have become one of the top u.s. military weapons in recent years now the cia is asking the white house to approve an expansion of their drones program does this mean the spy agency is turning into a paramilitary force will question more. plus the race for the white house is extremely close between mitt romney and barack obama but could the election be tipped in one direction by employers dictating who their employees should vote for will look into the force being applied by some bosses during the presidential campaign. and as voters prepare to cast their ballots in november many will face

obstacles from voter intimidation to voter suppression is this really what democracy looks like and could these actions still be election we'll look into the issue coming up. it's friday october nineteenth four pm in washington d.c. i'm megan lopez and you're watching r.t. . all right starting off this hour cia director david petraeus is urging the white house to expand the agency's drone fleet but said that the expansion will allow the cia to carry on with its mission in pakistan yemen and possibly in north africa and the cia isn't the only one asking for more unmanned aerial vehicles in the next decade defense spending on known medium and large sized drones will be nearly forty billion dollars the pentagon is planning to increase its inventory by thirty five percent so let's compare the drone fleet that we have now versus the one that we

have planned for the future as far as electronics where warfare and reconnaissance drones the u.s. has five hundred thirty six operational you avi's and is planning to buy another one hundred forty five when it comes to light attack and reconnaissance drones two hundred fifty five of those are operational and another five hundred eighty seven are planned so in total the u.s. has seventy seven one hundred ninety one operational drones right now and is planning to buy another seven hundred thirty two now it is important to note that these are only air base drones so to talk about whether or not these military machines are really necessary lieutenant colonel anthony shaffer joins me now he's the director of external communications for the center of vance vance defense studies hi there tony thank you so much for joining the program. thank you ari let's start off by asking about why the cia needs these drones in the first place.

well they don't i think this is one of those areas where i would consider mission creep one of the things that happened and let's be very clear drones go back to the one nine hundred fifty s. us or force used them for any number of purpose a sense that they've become much more sophisticated over the past ten years one of the things c.i. was doing back in the late ninety's early two thousand was what it was using drones for reconnaissance a very legitimate mission however it's redundant and this is where we need to be careful about who's doing walk regarding military operations overseas special operations command and the military also have a fleet of drones so the question becomes why do you need to fleets and is the cia's essentially as you pointed out your direction ramping up to be a parent paramilitary organization is that in our interests i would argue no during world war two we had some occult o.s.'s office of strategic services it did both the intelligence collection mission this special operations mission and a lot of us who are on the inside studying the budget issues where we talk about being more efficient not loaded really are asking why do we need both of these

things so i think what the choices call for this at this point time especially in light of president obama's narrative that we're quote unquote shutting down the wars really calls to question why wait why do we need all of these drones if we're actually rushing back our military and tony about the often just what you just said there in the past ten years we've really seen a blur between excuse me. tween military operations and cia now the cia was supposed to be soviet intelligence gathering service and now they're conducting these operations so can you talk a little bit about this test and also whether or not it is here to stay right well the cia has always had something in this responsibility called covert action covert action is something you do clandestinely but the the results are are over you can see the results this is been part of their d.n.a. from day one i'm not saying that they shouldn't do that what i'm saying is you need to have to use that capability on

a limited basis focused only solely on strategic game. shoes arguably the military the department of defense does things to defend our nation and when it comes to this sort of deal be has always had the capability to do what we call black operations which is different by definition only sometimes then then covert action and this is one of those things that we have to have a smarter congress smarter white house determine what is needed and then ask congress to fund that rather than allow everybody this indefinite expansion of capabilities and that's what we see here kind of this hey we think this is a good idea let's fund it without regard to what is the actual threat or do we actually trying to build capability to defend ourselves against again this is why we have to take a step back and say do we really need all of this at a time that we have difficult challenges regarding budget i mean we're about to go see susan seaquest ration for goodness sake is system best use of our limited defense researchers and tony i also think it's important to note that general petraeus was in charge of the afghanistan and iraq operations up until

a little bit more than a year ago now he had a vast arsenal of drones and his pocket back then and now he has only about thirty to thirty five according to the cia reports so right i mean i have to ask you is this an example of a tried and true policy being pushed through the back door. absolutely and what i've said i say the right here are to and i've said this on other networks what you see is the president the the president president raised the obama white house becoming overreliant on drones one of the things about those that these drones are part of the kill capture program always forgotten is the capture part of the program dead men tell no tales and we have created a dearth of intelligence by the fact we were capturing people were interrogating them that's why you saw a lot of things going on regarding this resurgence of al qaida because as a senator dianne feinstein said yesterday we don't do well in human intelligence human intelligence is getting inside those networks drones don't help you do that my suggestion is drop a trace get back to the p. and q. p.d.q.

. piece accused of actually doing human intelligence what c.i. supposed to be doing and step away from the technology and tony what we're also seeing is that it's not just kind of that they're focusing on they're also focusing on the hakani network can you talk a little bit about the difference between maybe the people that the cia is focusing on with these drones and the people and organizations that the military are focusing on or are they in fact one in the same well the blind the real truth here is that you have both organizations looking at key leadership what we call high value targets when i was there in zero three zero four we had a list i had a list a lot of those guys with one of the same there's tears on that list and that's where you divide up the radically you're going after he goes after u.c.i. goes after with that said there's a lot of overlap there's tons of overlap and we have a closer battlefield without any clear and indication of how we're going to sort through this and do it work one of the unpleasant truths is

a kind of network was used to our benefit during the soviet occupation it's being used against us now because we failed to understand the politics of pakistan and we're suffering the results of that again good human intelligence would help solve this using drones to killed mid-level leaders is not helping is creating the next generation of leaders who are more committed to that deafness traction united states and our allies much more than the ones we were dealing with before so i don't see the drone program as a path to victory and the current application and tony like you said we are losing a vast database of knowledge where every single time that we strongly different compounds. we lose the possibility of being able to stop for future attacks by not being able to gather that information but i do want to put the conversation just a little bit to libya now the new york times reportedly tracked down and interviewed one of the ringleaders behind the september eleventh benghazi attack meanwhile president obama is saying that the u.s. is still sorting through the information now given libya's shaky situation i mean

what are the chances that this man and others potentially responsible for this attack will be held accountable for their actions and i mean what is taking so long . two things first this administration one of the slow roll this and let me begin very clear you know when you talk about taking three weeks to get an f.b.i. team to benghazi let me tell you something went to churchill was here in washington d.c. within two weeks of the beginning of world war two so if you can move with the church or the washington d.c. in two weeks i think you can move an f.b.i. team using twenty percent to technology to benghazi that was a choice with that said i think there's a lot of things that you missed ration doesn't want to come out that's why you see a slow roll here and more importantly while there are drones now circling libya the administration's admitted this they going to do a thing until after the eighth of november as far as i can tell because the optic would be all wrong so much of what's going on right now is all about trying to slow roll this to make sure that we don't see anything that looks looks like it does

goes against the white house narrative until after the election it's a political issue let me tell you from here by guys the inside we knew about this within twenty four hours we had a cable to get f.b.i. guys there within twenty four hours the white house and others have chosen to not exercise the capability we've had a lot of money to have one point is just so surprising that the new york times was allegedly able to track down this man apparently he was in a very high class hotel lobby sipping on a strawberry frappuccino valeriano and he was actually talking to us saying it's your fault that this happened that we don't want you here and that is nothing is going to happen against them but let me ask you one more question today there was a car bombing in london on it was one of the most. horrible an incident that happened in live on lot for years obviously there was a lot back in the ninety's but up in right in the last four years it's been pretty peaceful now the region talking about the middle east and north africa continues to see this influx of instability are we getting to the point where intervention in the region will be inevitable just to follow the violence. no i don't see it as

being practical i'm a reagan republican and president reagan i learned a hard lesson in lebanon when we try to have the marine corps there doing essentially peacekeeping operations as much as it pains me to see people die especially in syria it is not our job to straighten out local issues i think we need to be very clear what the american interests are what we have to do to protect the american people and frankly it is up to the people who live there to work their issues out do we have allies there absolutely should we help our allies yes turkish turkey is valid you know jordan for the most part we need to look at how we work with our friends but not take the place of their work within what they have to do to protect their borders and their interests lieutenant colonel anthony shaffer director for commute external communications for the center of the vance the defense studies we appreciate your time sir thank you turning now to another american enemy a broad it has now been four months to the day that wiki leaks founder julian a son has been holed up in the ecuadorian embassy in london and still there has

been no forward progress and these political impasse songes granted political asylum by ecuador on august sixteenth but u.k. officials refuse to allow the wiki leaks founder to leave the embassy and the songs refuses to sneak out as many other asylum seekers have done in the past meanwhile a new report coming out this week demonstrates america's persistence in the issue of classified document drop newly released cables show that the us that australia has been handing over key intelligence on julian a staunch to washington over the past two years this latest information adds another layer to the convoluted picture of the players involved in this case it could also make a case for keeping us out of sweden and consequently consequently away from american influence. well we are team minus eighteen days until the presidential election and critics are already saying that voter intimidation and voter id laws

will affect the outcome now over the past few weeks we here at r.t. have told you about a few cases where employers are pushing their political views on their employees now we'd like to say that this is not the norm we'd like to say that the report that to report this is illegal and that steps are being taken to address this alleged form of voter intimidation but neither of those statements is truly the case so here's a compilation of some of the most egregious offenders earlier this month the koch brothers sent out a letter of to forty five thousand of their employees at georgia pacific saying quote if we elect candidates who want to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in borrowed money mostly on the money on costly new subsidies for a few favored cronies put unprecedented regulatory burdens on businesses prevent or delay new important important new construction projects and excessively hinder free trade than many of our more than fifty thousand u.s.

employers employees and contractors may suffer the consequences including higher gasoline prices runaway inflation and other ills this is true regardless of what your politician might be. this letter came in a packet filled with other information personalized by the state for which candidate the candidates the koch brothers actually approve of also part of this packet was the brochure that you're looking at right here this is one of the approved ones for organ employees it provides information about voting deadlines as well as a list of candidates that the koch brothers have stamped their approval on also in that packet was an anti obama editorial written by charles koch and a pro romney op ed written by david and then there's the case of c.e.o. of westgate resorts david segal westgate resorts is a national timeshare company of one of the largest resorts and one of the largest of its resort developers in the world in

a letter to his employees he wrote quote it's quite simple if any new taxes are levied on me or on my company as our current president plans i will have no choice but to reduce the size of this company rather than grow this company i'll be forced to cut back this means fewer jobs less benefits and certainly less opportunity for everyone he went on to say that if this does happen and he has to close shop that he won't be worried instead he'll be on the caribbean sitting under a v. sitting on a beach under a palm tree and retired with no employees to worry about and let's not forget about bob murray the c.e.o. of murray energy if you recall he's the one that forced employees from west virginia coal to take an unpaid day off work and attend a mitt romney speech in the front of the mine he's also routinely asked his employees to donate their time and money to political causes that he supports and one letter he wrote quote what is the difficult about asking a well paid salaried employee to give us three hours of his or her time every two

months. we have been insulted by every salaried employee who does not support our efforts more importantly we are going to lose what friends we have in washington d.c. as well as at this very critical time while mines are closing all around us and obama has eliminated forty five thirty unit coal fired power plants. now i know what you're thinking wait a minute i thought there were federal laws prohibiting employers from pushing political views not true not since a supreme court ruling on citizens united turns out it wasn't just about money or super pacs the ruling also allows employers to express electoral opinions to employees in private sector workplaces and they can also limit the amount of free speech employees can have on their national labor rate with the national labor relations act so why is all this happening and is this a form of voter intimidation and most importantly what are the potential effects

that this will have on the upcoming election well labor journalist mike elk has brought us many of these stories and he joins me now to answer a few of those questions hi there mike that was a lot of examples that i gave there it does seem to me like a lot of those examples happened to be republican is there any evidence of democrats in this case well certainly last year there was an instance where the union that represented a bunch of casino workers in las vegas got together with the company and they had a joint effort where the company allowed the union to push harry reid's action so yeah that happened but this was the union doing it and you know union is a body elected by workers and there's protections and contracts and you know union doesn't have the power to fire somebody for attending these kind of events so that's a big difference. in that there's no real legal protections if you are nonunion workers there to prevent a boss from filing for political. simply on. you know and what happens in this kind

of situation is that it has a real chilling effect in the workplace when a boss says hey i'm billed for soandso and you're not voting for that guy you know what if you put up yard signs for the what if you don't volunteer in your boss finds out about your job at risk and in this kind of economy i don't think a lot of people are willing to do that and i know that also mitt romney came out and this is your latest report is that mitt romney came out it in a conference a news conference and said that hey employers should be encouraging their employees to vote i think we have a clip of that let's play that really quick and then i'll get your opinions on that . i hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections and whether you agree with me or you agree with president obama are or whatever your political view i hope i hope you pass those along to your employees nothing illegal about you talking to your employees about what you

believe is best for the business. so larry is saying that this is what's best for the business you have no legal obligations other than to just say your personal opinion tell me about this report that you wrote and what the implications are of it so there's been a bunch of companies like you said that all of a sudden in the wake of systems united are pushing politics in the workplace and telling workers that if they don't vote for president obama they could get fired. and we might it's starting to look like this might be a cornett republican strategy here you have mitt romney encouraging a group of businessmen the national federation of independent business right wing leaning groups to get their employees to vote for romney and then you had a another story that was just broken about an hour ago by george tunic about herman cain and herman cain now is going around the country doing these training seminars training small business owners and how they can pressure their employees into voting for mitt romney and what you're seeing is what happens in anti-union

campaigns which is that you have a lot of workers that want to join the union i've seen so many cases like this you have seventy percent of the workers initially said they want to join the union when they get a couple weeks of your boss saying hey we may close the plant we may close down and then folks change their opinion not everybody does but if you get ten percent of workers and one factory to change their vote because i think they might lose their job because the boss tells them something untrue that's a pretty unfair and dirty wake campaign in my opinion and not only that but they're also suppressing these employees from expressing their own political views so talk about this a little bit and more specifically what exactly they're suppressing so i did a story on georgia pacific where they now have a social media policy that's very restrictive they say that you can't post anything even if it's non-work related the first poorly and general ga pacific which is owned by the koch brothers brand of reputation and this includes talking about the owners of georgia pacific the koch brothers so some workers have been told that they are posting too much about the koch brothers and it is being too political and

that we had a worker who blew the whistle on the koch brothers in a story that mark ames and. streeter who was denied a promotion despite having a very good score on his evaluation and it was written as a valuation that he talked about politics too much and we're pushing this is a real scary trend that employers are increasing their free speech rights to pressure their employees on the election while limiting the free speech rights of their employees to talk about their political views it really does seem like they're trying to control the message and i know that all of this is possible as far as limiting speech goes but as i mentioned earlier the national labor relations act and it's also extending as i understand into the social media realm where you're not allowed to say anything on twitter against your employee or your employer and that you can also be hurting yourself by expressing your political views if you have a facebook page and you like mitt romney or you like barack obama that potentially damaging on the right could potentially be damaging or the national labor relations board has read that has ruled that some of this activity is protected by the national labor relations act but it's unclear i talked to

a liberal or this week if you were to georgia pacific and you posted something about the coach and tell you not to believe that would be protected as part of union fifty but if you were to georgia pacific and you posted something about the cokes environmental record that's not protected you could be fired for that so it's a real grew and i also want to talk about the fact that it's not only these organizations it's also bigger organizations that we've seen i know one of them is delta delta airplane that we arrive pretty frequently they actually gave incentives to employees to go to washington d.c. and lobby one of the things that they offered was cheaper flying it's upgrades to first class they said if you want to go to washington before it's free flights there you go if you want to go to washington d.c. you want to lay a lobby for us against an anti union bill against the federal air and ministration and you you feel free to do that and we will get you there so it's not only against or for presidential candidates it's also against unions that these companies are offering incentives yet delta was certainly a company that has done some of this in lobbying for an anti-union bill and last

year delta push the referee. i'm in georgia where they're trying to get workers to vote for delta was really defensive today in the atlanta journal constitution saying that they haven't quite been engaged in this direct electioneering so companies are more wary of this and i think there is a big backlash you know not at a nonunion company like delta but in terms of brand i think it really hurts but if you look at all the small business owners who are nonunion i think you're going to see a lot of intimidation there and is there any way to solve this very quickly you know folks are members of the union they can protect themselves everybody else here and i have to listen to the lessons of the speeches all right mike alkali labor journalist thank you so much for joining us we appreciate your patience. and let's stick with this topic of presidential election highlights yet another case of potential corruption has come up new allegations are coming out this week that tagg romney owns an interest in heart interests of the voting machines which will be used to calculate votes and hamilton county ohio and because ohio is guaranteed to

be a critical swing state in the selection every vote in the county counts so could a republican be stealing the selection or harshness of the resident dot net the political pulse of the nation. electronic voting machines owned by a company with strong republican ties are set to count the vote in ohio which very well could determine the outcome of the two thousand and twelve us presidential election so is there a chance that mitt romney could steal this election this week let's talk about that even if ohio if one person wins i think it might be that person can win without ohio yes but no republican has ever won ever without winning ohio this time. i mean if mitt romney wins a movie in canada. it's that simple that simple do you think there's a possibility that this election could be stolen. if it's going to be stone.

it would be stolen by the democrats why do you say that because they're going to lose. if they lose they're going to be. anything is possible does that scare you sure so do you vote still any way or absolutely that you can't just let the fear keep you from being part just the potoroo right no but you think it's possible that mitt romney could steal the election i think it's very possible i think it's close and it's going to come down to the last minute so it's going to be something a little like that they could sway it which is unfortunate but yeah and. and a lot of people don't even know about it they just think oh well he won so that said yeah we want you to do about it want to make sure you go vote for brock and. tweet about her right now so most of people on the street they told me about one of my fitness houses one day they'd be you third porny would win the election no it

didn't matter does it matter whether the you know green libertarian conservative whatever just to break the halls of the two parties and if he's a she that wouldn't be bad either right so i'm going to magically said he says no use to that does it concern you that there's things like this in our country in general sure that kind of thing shouldn't shouldn't really happen. but i guess it does it happens a lot of places you don't ever find out about you know why don't we find out about this stuff why isn't there more transparency about what's really going on because like you say there's lots of money involved whether or not you think romney is going to steal the election the bottom line is those evoluting machines in ohio are owned and operated by a company whose employees have given hundreds of thousands of dollars the romney campaign so they very well could be determining who wins ohio a state that often determines who wins the election.

all right well couple account is up next on our team let's check in with laurin let's turn to see what's on today's agenda hey there lauren i know that today is the twenty fifth anniversary of black monday am i right it is the twenty fifth anniversary of black monday it is also the one year anniversary of capital account so we will be celebrating both for slightly different reasons obviously there is not a reason to celebrate a stock market crash twenty five years ago but there is a reason to celebrate our birthday but it's not just going to be gloating and you know cheering we are going to talk about the fed because that's a perfect thing that talk about a year into our show it's one of our core topics and as we have the foreign policy debates between the two main can. dates for president on monday i guarantee you the idea that the fed is enabling war in the united states is not something you're going to hear about but you can hear about it right here meghan today in just a couple minutes all right well congratulations on a one year we all have seen you guys transform and grow into the show that you are

and we we're looking forward to what you have in the future oh well thank you all right and that's going to do it here for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r.t. america check out our website r t v dot com slash usa i'll see you back here at five. dollars that so much and there's a huge musician. to mark the serial number please as the world faces on supporting different sides fighting the syrian civil war rebel groups within the country struggle to unify.

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