all right george. we're learning from you shopping malls. it's not a documentary but that didn't stop the white house the pentagon and even the cia from giving classified information to filmmakers during the creation of this the new film zero dark thirty meanwhile other secret leakers are being pursued under the espionage act well question what some call military help ocracy. or million should. shall we start speaking. well they may not be able to come together to solve america's financial problems

but senators on capitol hill sure last bygones be bygones when they all sat down together to watch the new england game movie on the taxpayers' dime nonetheless so why are we paying our lawmakers to kick back over a bowl of popcorn. and get ready for yet another fight as the fight for congress gets ready to head home for the holidays but before they go a couple of senators are quickly trying to pass a surveillance bill what this bill means for your privacy just ahead. it's thursday december twentieth a.p.m. here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching our t.v. . well begin this hour with wiki leaks founder julian assange onj earlier today a songe stepped onto the balcony of the ecuadorian embassy in london to address a crowd of supporters yesterday mark six months since assad first made his way to

the embassy after being granted asylum by the ecuadorian government and today he starred on the balcony giving a roundup of some of wiki leaks memorable moments two thousand and twelve he also assured supporters that the mission of the whistleblower an organization was far from over take a look true democracy is not the white house true democracy is not camera true democracy is the resistance of people with the truth against lies from time to right here in london every day ordinary people teach us the democracy is free speech and dissent for once we the people stop speaking out and stop dissenting once we are distracted or pacified once we turn away from each other we are no longer a free for true democracy is the sum is the sum of our existence

if you don't speak up if you give up what is uniquely yours as a human being if you surrender your consciousness your independence your sense of what is right and what is rome in other words perhaps without knowing it you become passive and controlled unable to defend yourselves and those you love people often ask what can i do. the answer is not so difficult learn how the world works challenge the statements and intentions of those who seek to control us behind a facade of democracy and more nikki unite in common purpose and call it principle to design document finance and defeat in loon challenge act now. that we was wiki leaks founder julian

assange and it is still up in the air if or when assad will be allowed safe passage out of london and likely get arrested if he steps foot outside of that embassy ecuador has called on the u.k. to allow us to travel to the latin american country to seek refuge but six months later the two nations remain deadlocked over the issue. now in select theaters zero dark thirty a film laboratory of the hunt for osama bin ladin now to make the hollywood blockbuster screenwriters were given special access to classified information from the cia here's a here's a peek. because the only thing that.

but some say the film does not accurately portray what led up to the capture of bin ladin critics say glorifies torture as critical in getting the information that led to the nine eleven mastermind another question why does hollywood get special access to classified information while the public remains in the dark over torture techniques used on terror suspects testimony from guantanamo bay remains classified as well as a congressional report that details pushchair bush era interrogation methods so is the movie and the continued secrecy of torture techniques doing a disservice to the public colonel morris davis professor at howard university school of law think so and join me earlier to explain why he thinks the film will give viewers a distorted view about how effective torture is. back when i was younger the movie jaws came out you know the public didn't have a lot of exposure to sharks but all of a sudden after seeing the movie everyone was terrified or shell terrified and i had

a lingering effect but my fear is that people don't have that much exposure to torture other than seeing shows like twenty four on television and they're going to go see this movie which purports to be based on fact you know bin laden was killed the public knows that they're going to go see this film this is going going to become their reality torture and it's a false pretrial and i'm afraid it's going to do for torture what jaws did for sharks i want to read this quote from jazeera jesselyn radek she represents an attorney that represents whistleblowers she says quote this is the height of hypocrisy carioca reveal that torture was a cia program not a pastime he called waterboarding torture and he said it was wrong because disclosures are obviously of tremendous public value and there are leaks was to embellish a controversial movie that already received unprecedented white house and cia assistance so she calls the dissemination of information for the movie hypocritical

in the face of others that were punished for whistle blowing and what do you think about that would you go as far as to call it hypocritical clearly it is i mean the same is that there are good leaks and badly if it's a leak that makes the public feel good then that's a good one and i think happens if it's something this embarrassing in the full weight of the government comes down on you and so i think that that is a valid point in you know it's as was mentioned michael vickers who is alleged to have leaked the information the department of justice is doing an investigation if you followed the o.j. investigations into torture in the destroy or destroy destroying the waterboarding tapes nothing ever comes of them usually people do the investigation get an award after for their great investigation but no one ever gets held accountable when it's a good leakers. thing that we like in d.o.d. put out a press release the other night praising mr vickers his integrity and his value to the department defense. i don't think you'll see him doing

a perp walk any time soon right yet in this movie certainly if they're in a lot of controversy some will say you know what this is just that just a movie what do you think about that was true it is just a movie but it's a movie that my understanding a beginning says is based on fact and so for the public as i said i think their exposure to torture is going to be what they see on camera and on film and for many people they're going to see in this film that torture works and there's already it's i was pleased to see that senator feinstein and levin and mccain sent a letter to us sony pictures asking them to correct this error saying that they've seen the senate report the thousands and thousands of pages cia documents about enhanced interrogation and that it didn't work and it is a disservice to the public to perpetrate this lie and i think it's also a disservice to the people that were involved in the program that i knew because apparently in the film it's pro-trade as being you know people that enjoy abusing

other people and it's cruel to this and at least my experience was that these were dedicated people that you know had a a purpose and i would certainly debate whether it's misguided but a purpose for doing what they were doing so i think it is a disservice on both sides of the ledger all right and so i know that you're also a big advocate saying that now is the time to make the guantanamo testimony public why do you say that well we know guantanamo has been this black mark on our history in fact russian president vladimir putin brought it up yesterday you know the u.s. passed a bill condemning human rights abuses in russia and he said who are you know who's the u.s. to lecture us when you've got guantanamo. so it's that lingering mark on our national character and you go on the military commissions official website you go on yahoo or google put in military commissions at the top they will come up as the official web site on their web site their motto is fairness transparency and

justice. and if you did you know you can have fairness and transcend justice but if you don't have the transparency in the world it's going to be skeptical so if we want to regain our credibility and if we truly are committed to fairness transparency and justice then we can't have these secret proceedings to try to hide what we did in the past right and i know that president obama said val that his administration would be a transparent a transparent one of a lot of people saying that that is not the case but some senators do agree with what you're saying right now senator mccain a prisoner of war himself wants the report that you speak of to be declassified we have a clip of had talking about this. they had a lot of access to the cia in fact. there's there's an investigation going on in about some of the information that they used and clearly i think they got the slant of those who are defending in my view what is unconscionable and that is torturing

people. so those advocate keeping this testimony. related to torture a secret say that it needs to remain secret because it's critical to our national security it is an argument that you hear over and over again as justification what do you think about this argument i think it's a bogus argument you know president obama issued an order that banned any use of the enhanced interrogation techniques which really had stopped before president bush ever left office so these techniques. that we're talking about we haven't used in years and if there's no plan we're not using them now we don't plan to use them in the future is certainly not jeopardizing our national security today or tomorrow is really hiding what we did in the past president obama in addition to his pledge on transparency signed an executive order on classified information and it says information can't be classified if the purpose is to conceal the commission of a crime or to hide embarrassment and given that you know these events took place

years ago they're not taking place today he's disclosed the torture memos that describe the techniques that were used to mean the horse left the barn a long time ago and what these techniques are so really the secrecy now is doing is hiding the embarrassment from the past and not bringing it out to the light of day and we can't you know we're doomed to repeat history if we don't acknowledge what we've done before so i agree with senator mccain this needs to be public right colonel i do want to read a part of your op ed here where you address this very read excuse me a part is offered where you address this very issue you say quote a fictionalized perpetrator portrayal of torture in the movie as a disservice to what should be a day. when you when public debate on a critical issue it falsely depicts members of the cia and gauging and gratuitous acts of violence and it falsely shows torture being a facet of affective way to get valuable intelligence despite the argument that zero dark thirty is just a movie for many of the millions of viewers it will become their perception of

reality about the efficacy of torture kind of elaborating on that what do you think is the danger of the moviegoers seeing this and kind of internalizing it as reality as fact we've already seen that happen during the bush administration the american red cross has a survey every few years looking at public attitudes and during the bush administration a majority the public was opposed to torture they did a survey a little over a year ago where a majority the public is in favor of torture and that number goes up the younger the person was so you've got a generation this grown up knowing nothing but the post nine eleven era in they see things like this it becomes their reality in that number two is going by public opinion on on torture the senators mention that in their letter that they sent to sony pictures saying that the public attitude has changed towards torture in this movie does is an opportunity to reinforce that false perception right of a very interesting kernel of really appreciate you coming on the show that was

colonel morris davis a professor at the howard university school of law. now to a blockbuster that is shaking things up in congress the movie lingen is a historic drama hailed for restoring americans faith in the country but centrally even having the power to break partisanship in congress here's a look at the sleet or. snow in the. unborn millions to try. shall we stop this bleeding. there was a special viewing of the movie at the. and it was a star studded event at the screening was the movie's director steven spielberg and it's are doing all day lewis who plays lincoln among other cast and crew they both have the honor of privately meeting senate majority leader harry reid the event the

journalist tweeting here's a few at rebecca berg road many more journos at this lincoln photo op than any fiscal cliff prosser who's covering the news for a p one reporters one reporter wonders aloud at any larry said details leaking from the hill she returned retreat someone there says daniel day lewis is not that tall ridiculously skinny short surprisingly gray hair and meredith shiner tweeted sort of disrespectful to hold recess subject to call of chair for senators to watch a movie when gallery a sergeant at arms plus count police staff have to stay she also said particularly when those are the same people whose home it is night because short through no fault of their own. that's right the center require the sergeant at arms and capitol police to work late for the movie screening now a little background the sergeant at arms is the largest and size of staff and budget in the senate the capitol police officers has

a force of about eight hundred but it's uncertain how many of them had to work overtime for this event. so as senators mingle with the stars others at the capitol are working overtime just in time for the holidays meanwhile congress is in broiled in a debate over how to cut the country's deficit which is in the trillions and how to stop the u.s. from falling over the so-called fiscal cliff and the movie magic really has a spell over congress the hope as ridiculous as it sounds is that a hollywood film will finally get the political parties to put aside their differences and work together to save the nation from economic calamity. the latter in our g u.s. lawmakers are getting ready to celebrate the holidays and with the holidays come get upset like a new wireless surveillance bill wrapped and sent with care to big brother the latest information on new fights so regulate the regulation.

here's mitt romney trying to figure out. that thing that the american.

here's another one you. know we're out of here. want to defeat terrorism the only liberal and the current. that you destructors from what you and i should care about because there are profit driven industries and souls of sensationalistic garbage because of breaking news i'm going to be martin and we're going to break this that. a congressman torricelli doesn't get much done during the lame duck session but it looks like the senate wants to act on passing warrantless wiretapping on u.s.

citizens that are overseas the vice amendments would renewed the controversial law a law is set to expire on new year's eve and while the senate would like to renew it before the year's and it doesn't look like the g.o.p. wants to debate it this despite serious concerns from privacy advocates that say the law allows the government to snoop on e-mails and other digital communications without getting a warrant for more i'm joined now by geo political analyst eric draitser welcome there eric so first job just give us the latest on this controversial surveillance surveillance bill. well the surveillance bill is basically trying to solidify what has already been seen as a common practice within the u.s. intelligence community and that is as was mentioned warrantless wiretapping and it's beyond this see we we use this term wiretapping as if we're talking about thirty years ago when they were simply listening in on phone calls but really what this allows is the government to have carte blanche to essentially surveil anyone

anytime anywhere they want with no judicial oversight at all at least at one point there was a process a legal process that had to be gone through and this essentially does away with that and does away with any legal protections that individual citizens have from this type of surveillance. what should the average why should the average person because sarah and about this now well for a number of reasons first and foremost is of course the personal privacy aspect people want to be able to go on the internet or to go on the phone and to be able to have this type of privacy what is what they expect but the reality is that that is essentially nonexistent anymore since two thousand and one since the patriot act especially the n.s.a. as well as the f.b.i. and other government agencies have essentially already had this type of program in place but people think for many different reasons because they think maybe their congresspeople represent them or that the government is somehow not totally mn

malevolent that this is only being done in extreme cases the reality is data mining and data storage and database creation information is being taken from millions of people on a daily basis so people for one don't want to have their privacy violated and for another they don't want to be part of this large database that is being created. all right so for people like you who are very concerned about this piece of legislation and the implications of it for your privacy protections can be put in place to to make it more acceptable to privacy advocates. i think that i think that it's a mistake to believe that you're going to legislate this type of thing out of existence i think that people need to rise up and demand that there is government accountability for these type of programs the bottom line is that the obama administration had come into the white house in two thousand and eight essential saying that government was going to be more transparent that the days of the the bush snooping program were over the reality is that if anything the obama

administration has expanded this type of surveillance and has made the police state all that much more pervasive so you know we could talk about process reforms we could talk about standing up against so people or any of the legislative actions that are a violation of privacy but i think on a larger scale what americans really need to be concerned about is making this part of a resistance movement saying that we are not only against the wars not only against economic exploitation we're also against the exploitation of individuals and their personal and constitutional rights this is an issue of civil liberties not simply an issue of wiretapping or snooping through google ok some lawmakers are very serious about getting this law passed they say they want to get it passed as soon as possible and doing so is critical to national security what do you think about that concern. i think it's about as laughable as passing this this fiscal cliff in

this grand bargain is to the economy i mean it's a manufactured issue as the fiscal cliff is the idea that snooping on individuals inside of the united states as a national security question is completely laughable this is much more about what they call anti piracy intellectual property it's also about the creation as i mentioned of these databases planning for a future situation in the united states look at what we see in this country right now you see labor rising up you see people beginning some form of resistance against this all pervasive police state and they need to have this apparatus in place in order to have that in place it needs to be legislated into place and that is exactly what they're trying to do and as usual they're trying to ram it through congress at the last minute at the end of the year when most people are off on holidays not paying attention it is another example of the level of dishonesty and corruption that exists in washington and that is really rotted washington from

within. what consent to send eric and dan said a sense concerned about the path and. without careful consideration what if anything can a damp. well i think the most most obviously is they could organize themselves locally they could press their local congresspeople they could get involved with a number of different organizations which are trying to fight this type of this type of actions by the government but i think that also people need to become educated i think that unfortunately most people are woefully under informed when it comes to this issue that again they think that the the warrantless spying is being done on you know dangerous people inside the united states people that are suspected of al qaeda there they don't realize that this type of surveillance is being done on your neighbor on your brother or on your mother and on everybody else and so people becoming educated dropping the mainstream media and looking at alternative media looking at russia today and other international news sources that

are actually covering this issue see if people are taking their information from c.n.n. and fox news and m s n b c then they're getting their information from those same sources that are complicit in exactly this type of program if you think that google or yahoo or fox or any of these large corporations are all trying to serve your best interests you're sorely mistaken and things like knowledge and power and eric absolutely right have really appreciate you coming on the show that was geo political analyst eric draitser from stop and perilous on dot com thank you. so had on our theory thing you thought you knew you don't now at least when it comes to north korea and carries over its nuclear capabilities and missile program well separate fact from fear mongering next.

subject. it's been a week since north korea has launched

a rocket and put it into orbit if you will to a strong response with people fearing the worst but it was a precursor to firing a long range weapon amid the frenzy some misinformation was reported so we want to set the record straight first off the north korean rocket launch was a space launch not a ballistic missile test the launch was no big surprise despite reports stating that everyone in d.c. was caught off guard it's highly unlikely no one in the administration knew the window to carry out the launch was fairly long from december tenth to the twenty second so the precise time may not have been known but there was a general idea when it was korea put it isn't put into orbit really isn't that scary and the north korea managed to put a satellite into orbit own all pretty similar to most satellite launches the jury is still out on how functional the satellite is with many observers still waiting on transmissions that would include scientific data despite possibly providing the

country with details that would help in structuring long range missile launches in the future it seems north korean space on jack's whole little threat in the short term so there is still much we have to learn but it's important not to jump to conclusions the fuel unwarranted fears for now north korean space objects are on predictable orbits being tracked by the u.s. military and others around the world. that is going to do it for now but if you miss a part of today's show you are in luck we post all of our interviews online in full you can just head on over to our you tube channel that is youtube dot com slash our team america there you can click comment and forward the links to your friends and for the very latest information on the stories we cover today and if you wouldn't have time to get to you can check out our web site that's our teeth dot com slash usa and to find out what i'm doing or will my.