john harwood in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture argo wowed audiences was thrilling action scenes and compelling story but does it distort history and rehash the lives that one reagan the presidency as robert perry building up in a moment also louisiana's a voucher program supported schools that teach creationism and celebrate the k.k.k. is this the future of american education i'll talk with randi weingarten see what we can do to stop the right's war schools and the corporate media just can't wrap their heads around why over chavez used venezuela's oil wealth to fight poverty what don't they get to tell you and i'd still eat it.

you need to know this millions of americans have seen argo jaska winning movie based on the iran hostage crisis unfortunately the story presented in argo isn't the real story behind the crisis but more of the story that the ronald reagan campaign used to manipulate americans and to help him win the presidency. into the . the civilized. everything. seized in more than sixty american citizens. seems to be held as hostages who told him to go home. when the reagan bush ticket first rolled out of the republican convention nobody thought reagan had a chance against jimmy carter the oil price shocks from the arab oil embargo were producing inflate. there was

a mild recession but still americans largely thought reagan was a ray gun radical and he was way down in the polls and then the hostages were taken in iran to the carter administration it was a disaster so the reagan campaign it was an opportunity just like nixon preventing the vietnam war from ending in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight bill casey who was running the reagan campaign knew he had to prevent carter from freeing the hostages if carter pulled it off either militarily or through negotiations he easily win the election on the other hand if the iranians held the hostages to and through the election carter would look weak in impotent and reagan could win our reihana good work in the reagan state department wrote a book about that time titled october surprise she entered for gary sick both reported during the week of october fifteenth through the twentieth reagan campaign director bill casey went to paris and met with representatives of the ayatollah asking him to stop negotiating with carter and just hold the hostages until after

the election if iran would do this case he promised he'd get them weapons for the us supplied military that the shah had amassed route those weapons through israel so no one would ever know the iranians yes the day after casey's final paris to go she asians on october twenty first one hundred eighty iranians inexplicably at least of the carter administration thought it was working out a deal stop negotiating the world later learned that over the next three days israel began shipping f. four fighter jet fighters to iran the first of many shipments of u.s. made weapons and military hardware to go that route over the next few years and on january twentieth at the exact moment reagan raised his hand to be sworn in iranians release the hostages it was their way of saying deal done. when we found out about it and that the money the iranians were paying reagan for the military hardware that was being used to kill contra rebels in nicaragua it was referred to

as the iran contra scandal but the american people couldn't know about the election theft congress in the one nine hundred eighty s. and the clinton ministration the one nine hundred ninety s. refused to seriously investigate reagan's october surprise it was just like with l.b.j. not wanting to out nixon the american people couldn't lose faith in their electoral process or their commander in chief. but last week the man who ran for and was elected president of iran during the hostage crisis in one nine hundred eighty wrote an op ed for the christian science monitor to set the record straight. bonnie sagar wrote that i had told khomeini and ronald reagan that organized a clandestine negotiation later known as the october surprise which prevented the attempts by myself and then us president jimmy carter to free the hostages before the one nine hundred eighty us presidential election took place the fact that they were not released to the results of the election in favor of reagan two of my advisors he wrote hussein of safavi and solder. of fozzy were

executed by khomeini's regime because they had become aware of the secret relationship between khomeini his son ahmed and the islamic republican party in the reagan administration body solder lays it out although others have been trying to tell us about reagan's illegitimate presidency and by extension bush senior's illegitimate presidency for decades as he points out the reagan campaign in the ayatollah worked against the will of the iranian people and president bonnie saw you work he wrote i openly oppose the hostage taking throughout the election campaign telling students that occupying an embassy in the heart of tehran was a sign of cowardice rather than courage i won the election with over seventy six percent of the vote in part on that platform other candidates also were openly against hostage taking and overall ninety six percent of the votes in that election were given to candidates who were against it. the bottom line here is that ronald reagan manipulated the american people and used the iran hostage crisis to steal

the one nine hundred eighty election now joining me to talk more about republican election faffed is robert perry editor consortium is the author of several books including his latest american stolen narrative from washington in madison to nixon reagan in the bushes to obama robert welcome back thanks tom great to have you with us so what let's start at the beginning here and actually start the beginning i guess we're going to go back to the madison view the whole show as of right but. the l.b.j. library back a year or two ago three years ago i guess it is now released the tapes showing that nixon had blown up those negotiations which caused l.b.j. as vice president you were humphrey to lose the election and nixon this is the same kind of thing right you basically have these two major scandals probably perhaps the two biggest national security scandals the last third of the century the twentieth century watergate and the iran contra scandal and what we now know based

on some of the new material coming out of these archives is that they actually weren't the big scandals those scandals themselves were part of sort of sequels to earlier scandals in the case of the watergate we now know that what nixon was very concerned about why he organized the plumbers in the first place was that a file about him sabotaging the vietnam peace talks in sixty eight had gone missing we now know it was in the possession of l.b.j.'s national security aide what ross doubt but nixon didn't know that so he said so he said about especially after the pentagon papers started appearing in june of seventy one nixon orders the creation of a team to break into brookings where he thinks maybe this file is is hidden so we so what we really start seeing is that watergate was not just about spying on the democrats it was really about trying to cover up this earlier scandal. what was at that time secret reserve and basically you know election rigging or circumstance

rigging that caused the election then extending the war for four more years right at the cost of more than twenty thousand american lives and maybe a million vietnamese and spreading the war into cambodia so so fast forward to iran contra right jimmy carter's president just to take with a very similar happens with the rand contra which i covered at the associated press in newsweek and and that was that we thought we thought at that time when they were in contra scandal broke that was about eighty five to eighty six there were these strange sales to iran which had been hidden and some of the money went to the contras in nicaragua what we now know based on some of the material coming out of these archives is that this also goes back to this earlier election fraud scheme where ronald reagan's campaign and some of the same people that were involved with nixon try again to use a foreign policy crisis this time the hostage crisis mind jimmy carter so we now know that in some ways iran contra was an extension of this earlier perhaps more more serious scandal so next talked to to talk to the folks in vietnam and said

don't negotiate with l.b.j. because l.b.j. had basically was they were ready to end the vietnam war nixon blew that up that got him elected and reagan's campaign i believe was bill casey wasn't his campaign which case it was a campaign director but involve other people including his vice presidential nominee in a drawer james w. bush so reagan and bush that blew up the hostage negotiations between between jimmy carter and and bonnie solder or or that's what the evidence points to without very clearly very strongly this point and so nixon wasn't a legitimate president reagan wasn't and by extension bush sr was an illegitimate president and then we have in florida eighty thousand african-americans being thrown off the rolls just before the election in two thousand by jeb bush at the you know by katherine harris at the behest of jeb bush the the brother. george w. bush have there been any republicans legitimately elected president united states

since eisenhower. well i mean it depends what you mean by legitimate i mean if you and i was out with crimes and misdemeanors well if you're ninety four reagan was reelected by a substantial margin there's there's there's no real claim that wouldn't happen to had he not been president yes he would probably would not have been up for reelection in eighty four and and obviously bush sr won fairly decisive leader eighty eight again it was a fairly dirty election a lot of dirty tricks are played on michael. had it not i would not have been an incumbent probably would not have been a candidate you're right so but all i'm saying is those elections seem to have been not tampered with in the way that eighty was in the way the sixty eight was right and the way through the way two thousand two thousand and arguably two thousand and four in ohio. harvey wasserman. so what what should we as americans for. one thing we need to know what our history really is and that's the point of my new my new book america stolen narrative is to go back to some of

this new material and look at this in a way of saying ok what do we actually say based on hard evidence based on what's now available from the archives many of these tapes are now available conversations that were held somewhere quite remarkable it was a great conversation in sixty eight right before the election where l.b.j. confronts nixon over what johnson has discovered and that only came out a few years ago as you know but there's now a rich story to be told based on all these documents that detail how this happened and the remarkable thing is that when when when l.b.j. left the white house in early sixty nine he orders walt rostow take the file the file that had the wiretaps of nixon's sabotage of the peace talks so that removed from the white house nixon learns from j. edgar hoover the f.b.i. director that a file existed but they can't find it and that leads them all to me it lead to increasing lead frustrated frantic way to. form the team under you howard hunt to go start breaking into see if they can find it which we know is watergate so it's

a very remarkable tale of how these different events tie together and lead to something quite remarkable for the american democratic process if you say people could could look at this and say you know what l.b.j. i mean i've listened to the tapes l.b.j. says to everett dirksen i can't let the american people know about this he says he also says it's treason yes he says i know and perhaps the most remarkable tape to meet tom was the one where there's a point where johnson's thinking about going public right before the election and sixty eight and he has a conference call with secretary of state park clipper defense secretary and roscoe and johnson kind of wants to go public but they all talk him out of it and say this would be not good for the country if the american people were to learn this robert perry or don't thanks so much for being with us. coming up hippies worship satan dragons are real as crazy as those statements sound they're being taught to school children in louisiana what the heck is going on in our nation's schools.

for some people the extreme cold just a chilling switch. if it's a cooling if you look you can see that the water in my body feels really warm now this is good for you. they plunge into icy water to make themselves stronger you can't get used to the cold if you can tolerate it and you can struggle with. people of snow and ice picks as a frost. surviving the cold. wealthy british style.

market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger or a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds of reports . so.

and screw news satan worshipping hippies iraq klansmen real live dragon's now these are not big months ago when backs delusional mind their true facts well at least according to a new series of textbooks used in schools funded by louisiana and indiana's voucher programs as uncovered by recent reporting from mother jones and think progress governor bobby jindal is much wanted plan to provide students with a greater educational choice ends up using taxpayer dollars to support an academic curriculum that would make jerry falwell but wash its share in accuracy and stupidity but this kind of stuff only happens in a crazy cell right. thank you again in february mother jones in the guardian revealed attempt by right wing oligarchy like the koch brothers to disseminate libertarian propaganda to public schools throughout the country the materials

financed by the shadowy network known as the donors trust included lessons taught by fox businesses john stossel on the myth of climate change and the evil of the minimum wage all those styles videos are not as religious as louisiana's textbooks are just as crazy here's the truth there is an ongoing attempt by right wing and corporate elements to privatized corporate ties and lobotomize our schools it's even reached our nation's capital as chancellor washington d.c. is public schools from two thousand and seven to two thousand and ten we shall reach force the city to accept a citywide system of charter schools and took control of the school board out of the hands of the city's working public and just last year the obama administration okayed a plan to allow school vouchers here in washington d.c. because in the end it's all about the money the corporate oligarchy back about your plans and charter schools want one thing to turn our commons into their personal

profit engine they say they want to improve access to high quality education but at best charter schools and your programs have zero impact on improving student performance at worst they expose our children and our taxpayer money to the type of religious nonsense currently taught bobby jindal alls louisiana we need to improve our public schools not destroy them fortunately so americans are fighting back against this all out assault on public schools randi weingarten president of the american federation of teachers was arrested last week while leading a protest against philadelphia's plan to shut down twenty three city schools and he weingarten joins us now in the studio to discuss the threat to our public schools and what can be done to stop it randi thanks welcome back thanks to have you with us first of all what's going on in philadelphia so. in philadelphia. the public schools have sustained cut after cut after cut. last bar

loss of music loss of a.p. studies loss of virtually everything at the same exact time as charter schools have become a growth industry not that the charters are doing any better. and then on top of all of this the former superintendent was found to have mismanaged money was fired and now what philly is saying is that because of that mismanagement they're going to close mass close any number of schools first start is thirty seven and as of last week it was twenty nine that's one out of every eight philadelphia public schools creating a vacuum that can be filled by the charter schools are creating a vacuum and and by the way now one of the charter schools none of whom are doing any better than the philadelphia schools were slated to close only the philadelphia public schools who have gotten cut after cut now so what's happened was this

unelected board the s.r.c. made these decisions held a bunch of hearings for the last several months over four thousand members of the community in philly came out to these hearings the philadelphia community clergy parents teachers put together a plan and said do two things put the school closings on hold for one year and let us work out this plan to give every philadelphian student a great education like i actually saw and some of the schools like at the andrew jackson school so they had a really responsible plan they went to every single hearing we tried to get a meeting with. we have tried to talk to the school this unelected school reform commission and what a shock. they refused to listen to any of it and that's why a bunch of community activists and myself tried to block an illegal meeting from

happening to close the schools the bottom line is this philly is a city of neighborhoods and when you close schools you destabilize neighborhoods you don't fix it you just destabilize neighborhoods and what we've said is fix close schools let's improve public education for all kids don't do a reckless plan that only costs money and that's not going to actually help one child but we have we have groups from the the john stossel ideological libertarians there billionaire funders to bill gates and his foundation to the obama administration people within the obama administration who all seem to think the children are a commodity that education is a commodity the children are products on an assembly line and we can just tweak the assembly line just right or am i getting this wrong is well i think i would actually put john stossel in a different position than the obama administration having said that there is too

much of vexation and measurement and competition and what the evidence has said is that that doesn't really work measurement doesn't actually help improve children's education data is important to in inform education but not to drive it and what we've seen is that these mass closing of schools take take washington d.c. they said it was going to save nine million dollars it actually cost forty million dollars there's a study out of chicago that says that the mass closings there have actually made education worse for kids we see the same thing in new york with the mass closings of schools it push huge pressure on the schools that kids were going to hugely increasing in rome and and then we saw a drop in attendance and a drop in graduation rates. so what this is if you actually follow the money because the boston consulting group has actually made these plans in philly and in

chicago is to create mass closings after mass austerity create a vacuum that private sector and entities can then fill it means the dooms day of public education which means which really hurts kids democracy long term our economy and that's why you had a huge number of people come together in philly it's not just teachers it was teachers parents kids clergy community saying fix don't close our schools and stop the stabilizing our neighborhoods we want to great public school in every neighborhood now i've heard from conservatives in this town and and actually a friend who has kids in public schools in this town or in one of the charter schools or actually. over the last few years the schools in d.c. have gotten better because of the charter schools and voucher programs and your spog so if you actually look at the evidence the boucher programs in

d.c. were not any better then the public sector the public school probably not the outcomes what has happened is this the charters in d.c. . created a more of a safe zone for kids there were a lot of built in there were a lot of built in advantages to them but what happened is you had more parental engagement and you had more of a safe corridor program and you had a different level of interaction in the charters and i don't blame a parent one iota for saying i want to send my child to a safe school and i want my child to get that into the public education so yes and in fact what we're trying to get also so i want to state see and i know that mary. gray is trying to do it now i want to see as much attention paid to safety in public systems and public schools i want to see as much of this outside money that

goes to charters bring it to public schools let's have more or let's have more music let's have programs like that and being semi subsidized because that is a rail logs in the show and and and let me just say that charters initially were supposed to be laboratories of innovation where if we saw some really good stuff happen and we put in what we put up with all their clothes and just so now it is a competition system as opposed to how can we each help each other randi weingarten thank you so much keep up the great work like. it's the good the bad of the very very character dosis lee ugly the good. york times columnist smashed the myth of social security insolvency during his sunday

appearance on a.b.c.'s this week it was constant senator ron johnson urged his fellow panelist to take a hard look at the facts of government spending crewmen interrupted to point out that the senator is well less than accurate understanding of reality. recently pointed made my point to agree on the focus matter falls where there may or may not be some security thing so security is dirt if it has a dedicated revenue base it has a trust fund based on the dedicated revenue base you can't change the rules midstream to say i'll suddenly disappear as you see these years of trying to see senator johnson and his corporate bag buddies have everyone worried about entitlement spending but here's the truth so security is as well thought of a program as any other most of the mainstream media has succumbed to the right's chicken little rhetoric it's reassuring to. see a pundit of crude wins influence call this obsession with social security's downfall what it is a big fat lie. the bad arkansas state representative jody dickinson you know that

saw us representatives decided against honoring a true american revolutionary on friday when a voted down a proposal to make january twenty ninth thomas paine day for a new state representative jody dickinson pains works are just too insulting to religion the war of the state morial that seems a representative dickinson has a strange understanding of the word insulting. celebrates jefferson davis the june third right he's no one could possibly find all of a pottery defender of slavery and racism offensive and blue and the very very ugly the right wing twitter sphere and right wing troll army showed its true colors this past week when it flooded zerlina maxwell z. social media pages with sexist and racist comments as a guest on fox news hannity talk show maxwell criticized those sean hannity's claim that our mean women prevents rape and pointed out the danger of trying to solve violence with more violence apparently logic was just too much for the right wing

cyber or one twitter user called maxwell a racial slur and said he hoped for rape and murder of the tweeted that she needed to be gang raped to get some common sense all this after maxwell bravely discussed her own personal rape story on the air with an a d n a fellow guest make no mistake about it this is how the rape wing masses really think and that is just very very. after the break it's been two years since a devastating tsunami hit japan crippled daiichi nuclear power plants. what's the situation of the fukushima nuclear plant that day and will the united states wake up and realize the dangers of nuclear power before it's too.

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