anyway. john kerry's in charge today is kerry's first day on the job as secretary of state what is already waiting for him on the desk will explore the issues facing him and his do job. and you'll never guess who's running for senate in australia julian assange has had is officially in the running for a member of the wiki leaks party can he win and how would this affect his asylum case that story ahead. and from torture to cyber surveillance the u.s. is interested in any methods that will help it find the truth but can we trust the most basic methods lie detectors will question more. it's monday february fourth four pm in washington d.c.

i'm going lopez and you're watching r.t. all right well today marks john kerry's first official day as the sixty eighth secretary of state and perhaps not a moment too soon topping secretary kerry's agenda is a push to restart the peace talks between the israeli and the path the israelis and palestinians and in the more immediate future he plans to address the volatile situation in egypt and also the one in northern africa his appointment comes amid dropping u.s. approval ratings in the middle east something hillary clinton addressed last week. some of the success is that being attributed to you is the mending fix in you know it's the it's relation with have been mostly more yet the statistics going to dictate that if you look at the pew set this it shows that actually you're favoritism in comparison the bush administration is lower and in countries like turkey usually than and other places so what is going wrong does that mean that america's then in the in the in the word is on the receive in that space to just

being afflicted i think it's fair to say that the united states for the last decade has not been viewed favorably by a very high percentage of the people in any of the countries in the middle east or north africa for number of reasons some of it rooted of course in our strong support for israel over the many years of israel's existence as a state secondly i think that we have done and i take responsibility along with our entire government and our congress and perhaps our private sector we've not done a very good job in recent years reaching out in. a public. media way or in a culturally effective way to explain ourselves we in our efforts to support democracy. still are held accountable for supporting the

governments that were there before democracy we did business with other regimes and somehow that caused a lasting negativity toward us now in his own words john kerry has big hills to fill sense women have run the department for the past two terms for a closer look at secretary kerry's first week in office are to international correspondent. report. as you can imagine the competition for diplomatic post is tough especially in safe and wealthy countries somewhere in western europe and asia a recent study by two professors of international relations at pennsylvania state university looked at available information on president obama's donors direct political contributions and the positions that they received and they concluded that those whose political connections to president obama were measured in dollars for the administration service had an increased chance of representing the united states and western europe and a smaller chance of serving in say central asia or sub-saharan africa donors and

advisers involved in the diplomatic selection process see the competition this year has been so tight that those who have raised less than a million dollars are for the most part unlikely to be considered so what is the quote unquote price tag for the highly sought diplomatic posts according to this study friends and monaco topped the list with a level of personal contributions at six point two million dollars the price was quote unquote the price for a position in the u.k. the authors find appears to live between six hundred fifty thousand dollars and two point three million dollars a posting in luxembourg that tiny but very wealthy european country for example is valued as three point one million dollars dollars in direct contributions and appointment to portugal was predicted to have a value of around six hundred thousand dollars like all modern presidents before him president obama has appointed friends and donors to about thirty percent of

diplomatic posts while seventy percent of the posts go to career diplomats so judging by this research career diplomats go to places like yemen while big donors go to monaco nobody of course calls it bribery here and these are just respectable donors who get what they want when they pay the price this monday is john kerry's first work day at the same department for the next four years is going to be the country's top diplomat and this was the. is not to be the these are challenging times for u.s. foreign service u.s. embassies have come under attack in a number of countries in a number of muslim countries just within the last year the u.s. ambassador to libya was killed in september in benghazi shortly after the u.s. helped carry out regime change there there's a sense of denial in washington that this rage against the americans in the muslim world has something to do was washington's policies in those countries the u.s. has been very much invested in the middle east and north africa from what we heard

during john kerry's confirmation hearing at the moment the administration is reluctant to get involved militarily in syria and it's also trying to play and play down the drums of war with iran but that may change very quickly because the u.s. still continues to threaten war with iran it's unclear whether john kerry's war will be as of secretary of state in supporting or stopping a war he likes to present himself as this anti-war politician but he's the same politician who voted to authorize the iraq invasion was no evidence at hand that you read possessed weapons of mass destruction so john kerry has a mixed record and certainly big challenges ahead that was going on with our report and secretary clinton and kerry is planning a trip to the middle east later this month he's expected to stop in egypt and also in israel. well he's a man know who knows how to stir up controversy and also conversation this week

wiki leaks co-founder julian a son just once again dominating international headlines this time not for exposing the government but for trying to join it australia has confirmed that a songe is running for the country's senate he will run as a member of the australian wiki leaks party now if you recall a songe is currently holed up in the ecuadorian embassy in london trying to avoid extradition to sweden over rape allegations and if you're wondering if this can if this candidate actually has to be in the country in order to run for office the answer is no he just needs to be there within two months of actually winning the position so for more on how viable julian assange has run is i'm joined by jay lederman he's a lawyer for the lederman divine l. l. peter. welcome so let's first off by talking about julian assange his wanting to run now he's spent years fighting government corruption. by leaking this information why would he want to join them for joining the government he's been

fighting against. thank you for having me i could only honestly speculate about actual reasons but one would think the phone is already in statements that it's so he can bring transparency to his own government that of australia know what this creates some type of a loophole in order to get him out of out of the london the ecuadorian embassy. it's possible. there may be legal angles that he can pursue in terms of treaties between britain and australia but really i think it's more of a political question then it is a legal question really it becomes an issue of now you're not just holding someone who wants to grant asylum to you you're holding someone that is an elected official in a not just another country but a country that's very friendly to you and to whose government you'd like to support

so i think it becomes more of a political issue than a legal issue in that respect one has to ask us do you think that the government would accept him if he did in fact when i don't know that the government has a choice but to accept elected representatives ok one of the things that i do want to point out is that under the australian parliament members of the australian parliament actually don't have legal immunity within the country itself so we also know that australia and the us are very close in ties obviously australia was also damaged with his leaks that he did. the diplomatic cables that came out over two hundred fifty thousand what is what would make us launch think that he would be really any safer in australia that he would be in sweden in terms of a possible extradition to the us. well it's quite possible that he will not be any safer in australia than he would be in sweden in fact it's indeed possible that he

would be less safe in australia that that again also becomes a matter of contracts and a matter of politics it's the question is this does the australian government want to ignore the will of the people who might vote him in and ignore basically what england is doing is ignoring international law and custom by not granting him safe passage to ecuador so the question is to us trillian government want to do the same or does he have some kind of indication that they will follow. standardized procedures and standardize treaties and that they wouldn't treat their own politicians the way they would want politicians to be treated oversee and we know that julian assange has come under a lot of fire by a prime minister of australia his mother actually responded to this type of fire that he's received from the australian government let me play that sound bite for you and then i'll get your opinion. despite the fact that he's going to leave.

some two weeks later. decided that doing had broken no he was actually just trying to be he was he had refused to play because they could find a couple on the do you think. he's trying to do to get us. continue to sign my son. do you think going to the australian government would hand julian over to the united states if they had the possibility of doing so. that was just one part of a larger interview that r.t. spanish correspondent even colin sure presented so if his mother has such hesitation about him going to going to back to australia do you think that honestly that he has showed at this point well that's that's going to be between him his attorneys and what they can negotiate and not just

a question of what they can negotiate but what they can actually believe from that government whether they say you know come on back it'll be just fine here's a contract and then turn around and break that contract later on those are those are some or two different things but it sounds pretty clear that the prime minister is not terribly receptive to his presence there and that you know in. in her ability to speak for australia seems to be saying that australia doesn't want to back the cop first may indeed be true and again i don't mean to keep harping on the same point but it really does go back to the intersection of war and politics which is what's so interesting about a songes case is that it is this intersection of international law and just regular old politics. let me stop you there i do want to get to another point we only have about a minute left but when you would grant him an access to access exclusive access to

so much classified information within the australian government so in a hypothetical case where he did win and he was granted access back into the country and access to this information i mean considering the fact that he's made a career on leaking secret information do you could we expect him to bring even more transparency to australia what what kind of guarantees that they have that he wouldn't leak anything that they gave him well if you selected a resume it's he is elected with the idea that he's going to bring greater transparency and that may well with ball leaking documents that he and now his governmental capacity i think that a call for mental capacity might fuel is necessary for the greater safety of australians or greater safety of the citizens of the world so it isn't necessarily about leaking what what is considered classified data by the state it's about we've

seen what is considered classified data by the people in the people's right to know trumping the government's right to classify well we know that the first obstacle in all of this is getting the election commission to agree with accepting the wiki leaks party as a party in the australian parliament and then will i see where it goes from there jay later met a lawyer for the lieberman devine l.l.p. group thank you so much thank you. australia isn't the only country dealing with the aftermath of a songe the u.s. is also searching and prosecuting people who leaked information to the media one of the ways that the u.s. employs to spot problematic people is polygraph tests the obama administration is in the process of quietly crafting new legislation to deal with light attack their tests including a rule to force interrogators to ask job applicants in the intelligence community about leaked classified information or leaking it rather this proposed draft comes in the wake of allegations that federal agencies are blowing through legal and

ethical boundaries during these screenings now the defense intelligence director james clapper said that the polygraph inconsistency is were quote related to administrative practices rather than substance of the polygraphs but as our correspondent marina port now reports lie detectors aren't always as accurate as you would think. for more than three decades john sullivan worked as a polygraph examiner for america's central intelligence agency today the retired cia employee is offering some strong opinions about the nation's lie detector policy too many honest people are too many people who should be passing their tests aren't and and there's no there's no accountability for that. last year more than seventy three thousand americans were reportedly required to undergo polygraph tests in order to get or keep jobs with the federal government

according to an investigation by mcclatchy newspapers a growing number of u.s. agencies are asking employees and applicants intimate questions that extends way beyond the realm of national security probing matters such as sexual contact financial matters and past personal relationships a woman was pressured to talk about her experience being molested as a child and when the polar bear for said that he refused to go on with the interrogation he alleges that he was pressured to go back and continue and tara gating are a decade ago the national academies an organization advising washington on scientific matters urged the feds to stop using polygraphs as a screening technique or you scientists found that polygraphs aren't reliable enough to prevent innocent people from failing and deceptive candidates from passing i think it's important that the polygraph is not just. for

screening it's an interrogation to. question the trip that leads to. the drilling. question. may well be quite true over the past ten years. at least fifteen federal agencies including the n.s.a. and f.b.i. have reportedly continued or expanded their polygraph screenings with nearly five million people having access to classified information or washington maintains that polygraph testing is the most effective way from preventing secrets from being leaked lisa ribicoff is an independent polygraph examiner and investigator who uses the polygraph program designed by homeland security she contends that it's ninety eight percent accurate i do think that there are some questions pertaining to some emotional aspects and personal situations should not be included but i do

understand why they're included on the basis of that the government needs to see how exactly what their breaking point is what are they willing to discuss what are they not willing to discuss however applicants who are denied a coveted position after failing a polygraph are prohibited from accessing the records of their interrogation and are often barred from contesting the results were filing complaints in federal court in two thousand and four the cia veteran who conducted lie detector interrogations for thirty one years failed his own screening there was absolutely no question that the test was right. was a terrible test sullivan lost his security clearance and was denied a job with a federal contracting agency he claims his examiner falsified the results possible retribution for sullivan his book detailing america's polygraph system subs are coming for polygraph tests now are guilty until proven innocent and i think that's . a corruption and an abuse of the process the obama administration is now

promising to draft a new national polygraph policy that would prevent agencies from pushing legal or ethical boundaries during screenings but at the moment the program has no oversight or accountability meaning tens of thousands of u.s. citizens will continue getting personally probed in the name of new. security or not r t v or. well the polygraph tests might not be as accurate as we would want them to be for extracting information from someone but apparently waterboarding isn't either in an interview with n.b.c.'s meet the press u.s. defense secretary leon panetta admitted that the u.s. could have found osama bin laden without using torture take a look. you know order to put the puzzle of intelligence together. led us to bin laden there was a lot of intelligence there were a lot of pieces out there that were part of that puzzle yes some of it came from some of the tactics that were used at that time interrogation tactics that were

used but the fact is we we put together most of that intelligence without having to resort to that now panetta went on to say that some credible information was in fact extracted but that the u.s. could have done without this information brings of very serious question to light how far is the u.s. willing to go to get the truth and is the american government willing to compromise its principles for national security interests for more i'm joined by retired cia officer mcgovern had thank you so much for joining me so let's first start by talking about this meet the press interview that he did i mean we have heard that it pushes the legal and ethical limits during polygraph screenings but really let's start by talking about the types of overall security measures that the u.s. uses right now and are they effective. well torture has never worked you know in

two thousand and six when george bush first announced that enhanced interrogation techniques or what he called alternative set of procedures was going to do the job and that seemed a the head of army intelligence got up across the potomac and said and i quote no good intelligence has ever come from abusive interrogation techniques history shows that and the experience of the last five years hard years also shows that two thousand and six by just five two thousand and one he knows what he's talking about his whole career was based on interrogation techniques he was a three star general ok now so you don't get good information from torture now if you want beyond information may you know i have to concede torture or. it's like a charm and that's exactly what they were focusing on early on they wanted people to tell them or to admit that al qaeda was connected with saddam hussein and before

we invaded iraq sixty nine percent of the people the united states believe that saddam hussein had something to do with al qaeda and probably a role in nine eleven i'm sure is a masterful propaganda technique but it was all based on confessions extracted by enhanced interrogation techniques or or friendly allies like the ship sions to whom we sent a libyan defector whom we couldn't get to could fast but they got to confess and george bush used that of the seventh of october three days before congress voted for war against iran iraq so if not enhanced interrogation if not polygraph tests what's the answer we answer is the traditional interrogation techniques that the f.b.i. has used forever you see it's a mist to think that the cia was ever involved in interrogations they weren't when nine eleven happened and bush is tenet could he get some guys to do you know do the job you know the things that changed in all the gloves are coming off of tenet if

you were honest you say with people like that all we have is a lie detector people you know what we can get a we know some alumni from from vietnam and so forget we give and that's the how the contracting business grew up and that's how people will grade mostly contractors by the way in any one time in a mo were indoctrinated into these abusive take the acts which once again do not yield accurate information all right so celeste which topics a little bit i want start talking about cyber warfare now. right now we have heard that the u.s. is ramping up its cyber security measures in a way that we've never seen before frankly and this comes during a sequester so they're ramping up certain areas and taking down other areas now what. is the u.s. trying to chair it in is it achievable with cyber security at the moment you know reminds me of a bunch of adolescents with the new toys you know cyber toys you have

a new cyber offensive as well as defensive capability hole headed by a general by the way named keith alexander who lied to his congressional supervisors in the house intelligence committee when rush holt asked him are you spying on americans poor keith alexander no one told him that the new york times was going to publish the story that yes they were and if you don't know that i would rush holt who's very very upset about that because that's a felony that's a felony he's the guy that's not only running the national security agency he's going to do cyber security offensive capability so what i'm saying here is integrity counts if you get this kind of people running our cyber security well these toys are going to be used in a way that americans probably don't wish them to be used now the first time that we saw something really dramatic out on the in the cyber world was really was the stuxnet and iran in that we weren't supposed to find out about it now do you want

to see it has to in order for a president to go to war they have to get the approval of congress normally but when it comes to cyber aggressions they don't need better probles so much the way that they don't need approval with drone strikes is this a way for the president to get around or for not just president obama but for future presidents they're going to around the idea of war without actually going to congress. well i have to admit that if we have a president who violates the fifth the ban that no person shall be deprived of flight for liberty or property without due process and assassinating americans abroad we have a president who's actually eavesdropping on americans and all that that is being stored up and then the law doesn't seem to make make a big difference what i what i'm sick what i'm worried about and i'm not an expert in this field but i've seen this before we have new capabilities back thirty forty years ago people were thinking about putting nuclear weapons in space ok well you

know the americans and the russians got together you know this really makes sense you know let's let's do a treaty let's do a treaty that we can verify and let's not put nuclear weapons in space the same with cyber security we should talk about these things because it's a level playing fields where you know obviously the face of war is changing quite dramatically but we do need to switch topics just one more time there's something i have to ask you about colin powell the anniversary of the tenth anniversary of him going to the united nations and talking about weapons of mass destruction is tomorrow what kind of legacy are we learning from colin powell and from the u.s. intelligence agency coming out now you know well that was a very sad performance that we could tell that even if part of what he said was true that was no reason to go to war with iraq the war going to war was decided in the intelligence was manufactured so that fabricated actually rockefeller the head

of the senate intelligence committee said that the intelligence was uncorroborated contradicted or even nonexistent but we only have about a minute let me finish i have to ask you what role did colin powell play well he was a willing participant in this charade now how much he knew about the lies is really the jury. he knew enough to be very suspicious but this curveball character the fellow talked about the biological weapons labs unit remember those artists renderings and all that it looks like the head of the cia george tenet and his deputy john mclaughlin really really just sheaves powell on that and there's lots of circumstantial evidence that's the case that's come out recently say it said he was a condo not a con man necessarily. i think come around to thinking that he was more conned than con man at least on ray mcgovern thank you so much for your time sir are you most

welcome all right and that's going to do it for now i'll see you back here at five .

technology innovation. developments. we. covered. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture.