ridiculous counterproductive stupid three words used by former state department spokesman p.j. crowley to describe bradley manning's conditions while detained that comment evidently led to his resignation we'll talk to him next and when you hear about border drug smuggling you probably don't think of a u.s. citizen a newly released report is shedding light on the smugglers or from within our country's borders more on that story straight ahead. and the skies over southern california may soon be the scene of a clash clash of the drone business rivals that is straight ahead we'll explore the growing competition over drone test ranges in the u.s. . it's wednesday march twenty seventh five pm here in washington d.c.

i'm liz wall and you're watching our team. begin today with a look at the state of transparency in the u.s. former u.s. assistant secretary of state for public affairs p.j. crowley resigned from his job after publicly speaking out against the pretrial treatment of bradley manning the army private is accused of the biggest military security breach in american history here's part of manning's testimony in february . well many say that the military treatment of manning less harsh and can even be considered torture including crowley he called the treatment of manning quote ridiculous ridiculous counterproductive and stupid shortly after that statement he resigned p.j.

crowley joined us earlier to discuss this and other pressing foreign policy issues . i'm actually a firm believer. in the case against bradley manning his release of hundreds of thousands of documents some of them classified you know to wiki leaks has done serious damage to the united states national security and the national interest you know that said in a pretrial setting where anyone is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law i did think that his treatment was excessive i spoke out on that in fact in subsequently in the pretrial hearing the judge and the court of have evidently agreed with me. you had mentioned that this or at least that you do not agree with his actions that they were damaging to the united states can you elaborate on that house out sure. it from ation is classified for recent we can have a debate about whether there's too much information classified probably true but in

the context of the state department these were. cables summarizing confidential conversations between u.s. diplomats other diplomats around the world also conversations involving discussions with activists around the world even journalists around the world how the release of the of this information and in some cases the identities of these people have put those people real people at risk it has it disrupted for a time or in particular locations our ability to to do business with other governments and it you know the the reason we had developed what was called the n.c.d. the net central database was to. able to share information broadly across government so that for example the state department knew what the pentagon was doing the pentagon knew what our diplomats were doing in the aftermath of wiki leaks information has been pulled back to some extent it's not as broadly available

within government as had been and that's contrary to the psychology that we developed after nine eleven if you remember. there was a failure to connect the dots prior to nine eleven there was a push to share information rather than hold it within organizational silos that that now that dynamic is threatened by what occurred through a few weeks you did come forward and speak out as you had mentioned against the treatment the pretrial treatment of bradley manning is that a statement that you stand by today absolutely and i'm sure the validation from the judge that in the trial kind of i mean it's thankfully it's a moot point at this case in the aftermath of the controversy bradley manning was you was moved from quantico which was a facility that was ill inappropriate and ill suited for his case to move into the normal prison population in a different military brig that has not it became an issue in pretrial but but hopefully the trial that's forthcoming will be about what he did not about what the

government did to him i guess we're gonna have to wait and see that's what what we have we have learned a lot of china lie a lot of light on some of the foreign policy issues things that were happening overseas that we learned through these documents that were released i want to turn now to the situation now in syria because it has just come out that the united states is allegedly training syrian rebels in jordan rebels excuse me in jordan can you comment on that well the united states has expanded. the level of support to the syrian opposition on the political side it's trying to make the syrian opposition more effective and certainly the. week in an arab league meeting. the leader of the opposition al-khateeb has been seated as in the eyes of the arab league the legitimate representative of the syrian people that that's a symbolic step but they get it from

a political standpoint it's an important step now that the challenge is to make the opposition you know more viable prepared to govern. when the day comes that assad. leaves power. but most importantly to be seen as a viable alternative in the eyes of the syrian people that remains ongoing challenge the i state has drawn a line where it will not provide lethal assistance to the syrian opposition but is obviously involved in a process where for those countries that are providing military assistance to make sure it goes to. those who support an inclusive tolerant future syrian society and our guards say international law is it legal to arm the syrian resistance fighters because we are kind of help aiding the rebels that more and more in the background and direct well that's i mean the united

states is not providing lethal assistance as to those countries that are whether it's countries in the gulf whether it's russia that's that's a question to ask those countries are going to switch back now to the topic of the detention policy is the hunger strike is now going on in guantanamo bay today would be the fifty day mark. here wanted to quickly play we spoke to a lawyer for the detainees there explaining why the situation there is getting worse if i can take a quick listen to that. then the authorities decided to ratchet it up another notch and started searching qur'an and that's what sparked the immediate hunger strike it was the immediate spark but the underlying causes the men see no way out men can see the end. all right so what do you have to say as a farmer you know high ranking u.s. diplomat about the deterioration of guantanamo bay and its seemingly grim picture doesn't look like it's closing any time so first of all having worked for president

obama i thought that president obama had the right policy approach when he came into office in two thousand and nine to close guantanamo within one year i mean there are there are people like kuantan m o pose a great danger to the united states and it will tend to other countries around the world you know they and they should be put on trial what about the actual closing of that well but i think as we have seen shown since. the united states civilian justice system has for decades been able to handle terrorism cases we've had a number of them in recent months and years however as the president had had signed an executive order pledging he had to close guantanamo congress has prevented him from doing that there was a secondary effort through the state department for those. detainees who were judged to belong to no longer pose a threat or have been mistakenly brought to judge in the first place to transport

those back to home countries third countries and that has simply had tried that over time made the challenge smaller unfortunately the state department has been forced because of funding issues to close that office down so it really is congress that has basically frozen you know the situation in place the president is right now unable to move forward to reduce the population close to population and obviously that's having an effect in the data. that now all signs are pointing to it's not closing any time soon mr crowley appreciate you coming on the show former u.s. assistant secretary of state for public affairs p.j. crowley. it's day fifty of the hunger strikes ag long time to obey and his health conditions worsen for the dozens of detainees on strike the military has resorted to force feeding some of them are to correspond very important i has more. this hunger strike at the guantanamo bay detention center grows more dangerous by the

day the international committee of the red cross has announced that they have sent a doctor and another delegate to the island prison a week earlier than planned because of concerns surrounding the health of those hunger strikers participating in this protest now the i.c.r.c. representatives are scheduled to make a regular two week visit to the detention camp on april first but as we already just reported the organization says that they sent two representatives early due to issues in the concerns relating to the hunger strike now in the meantime navy captain robert a spokesman for the detention operation who we've been communicating with for more than two weeks now confirms that thirty one of the one hundred sixty six give no prisoners are on hunger strike eleven of the men are being force fed three of those men were hospitalized for rehydration an observation now two weeks

ago when r.t. reached out to captain and he dismissed any reports or allegations of a mass hunger strike taking place at the detention facility within the past day we spoke with attorney carlos warner and he recently went to go visit his clients for the phrase. he's been charged with war crimes but his attorney when speaking to our she read a statement from his client let's take a listen to that quote i scare myself when i look in the mirror let them kill us as we have nothing to lose we died when obama indefinitely detained us respect us or kill us it's your choice the u.s. must take off its mass killing mr warner said that his client has lost more than thirty pounds in a month that is. looked exhausted weak it was not just about treatment this is

about the fact that these inmates of these detainee detainees have lost hope these are men they're not animals they are people that we have grown to know many of the men the ones that are indefinitely detained they have zero hope they have no hope because of the ministration i think many of them are ready to die the question is how and when will they. know this hunger strike began according to attorneys on or around february sixth attorneys say that the prisoners went on the strike to protest the a legit confiscation of their personal items and they allege it sacrilege is handling of their korans there's one hundred sixty six six prisoners languishing still kuantan a mobile more than half of them have been cleared for either transfer or release attorneys say that by holding these men without charge without trial the united states is violating international laws of human rights. those are the correspondent

for in a port in iowa in new york. now to chicago where dozens of public schools are shutting down city officials have announced that fifty four schools which include sixty one buildings will close due to a drop in enrollment the school closures will ultimately affect thirty thousand students and their families chicago officials say the closures would save five hundred sixty million dollars over the next ten years was the biggest wave of school closings ever and the u.s. and as you can imagine many parents and teachers are angry over the shutdown and what it would mean for the city and the students for the chicago school closure i was joined earlier by nick utrecht an assistant editor for jacoby magazine and a contributing editor for in these times his book on the chicago teachers union and free market education reform will be published this summer he began by explaining what led to the school closings there have been a number of shutdowns in chicago over the years about seventy five since about the

ninety's when the school started being shut down here. since the dozen years ago. but the current spate of closing the biggest that has ever been seen in the city or anywhere and the district is now claiming that they're shutting down schools because of under and roman because there are some schools that are fifty percent sixty percent utilized according to their math in the past the justification for the closings was that schools were underperforming on things like standardized tests it shifted this year to say well it's not about school performance it's actually about the schools being underutilized and so how to how do you think this will affect the students and how are parents reacting to this. there seems to be a pretty uniform opposition to these closing across the city i mean the city held

several dozen hearings different and there are different neighborhoods in the city to hear from parents about what they thought about the closings in the neighborhoods and the hearings i attended in all the ones i heard about there is not a single person who got up and said i understand why you need to close the schools i support you in closing the schools and the uniform message really was there should not be any school closures and the district which had actually postponed its day for releasing the list of the city foreclosures in order to hear this kind of public input has actually said you know the sky go public school c.e.o. bob bennett recently said that she was a mess and she she took from those hearings which she didn't attend was that people understand why they are why the c.b.s. needs to close all of these schools so they are going to be a massive obstacle in these school closures are centered in communities mostly on

the south and west side almost entirely on the south and west side which are majority ever had the color and these are neighborhoods that have suffered from disinvestment for decades in the city and schools are a really central banker in those communities and with those with those gone it's not clear. that there will be much of an anchor left students are going to have to cross over into different gang lines which is a huge issue in chicago so i mean it looks like it's going to be a pretty. not another word used chaos for students in this community certainly a very big change for parents and teachers and students there but mika do you think that it's kind of just a sad inevitability when you have an environment that way down and the city is struggling to to fund schools that keep schools that are in existence keep them open that it's just kind of. necessary measure in order to know in order to close

the budget deficit well that's how the district has framed it that it is them fortune may be that they are the kind of owner and roman numbers that they claim but not much that can be done about that i mean and there's two things to say about that one i mean the only reason that these neighborhoods century are under enrolled is because there have been policies over the last decade or two that have push huge numbers of people color out of the city i mean i believe the numbers are that in the last decade we stand nine percent decline in the after american population chicago it's been around and large part pushed by closing of public housing and declining public portable housing a lot of neighborhoods but the second thing is that the district is actually opening are allowing the opening of charter schools in large numbers that have at the same time they're closing these traditional public schools so if the question is about under enrollment why would you be opening new schools or allowing new schools to open if the problem is under enrollment i mean it did seem clear that

the reason for these closings is more that they want to have a certain kind of school around chicago that the district is pushing for charter schools which provide an avenue for privatization of public education in c.p.s. and there hundred ten different charter schools around chicago right now of those seventy five closings that have happened in the past forty percent of those closed buildings are now privately operated most of which are done by charter so it seems like is this round of closings along with the closing that have been in the past are there just a way to sort of backdoor privatization to allow charter schools to expand in the stand that. that was michael utrecht assistant editor for decoding magazine and contributing editor for in these times. well senator robert menendez of new jersey was not too long ago when broiled in a sex scandal two prostitutes in the dominican republic gave interviews claiming he

paid them for sex this conversation started out about as other inappropriate actions including a look into his relationship with a donor in florida and as allegedly flew on the donor's private jet to the dominican republic a few years back but it turns out that may be where the wrongdoing adds those women who are paid to say what they said about the senator and now it looks like menendez is bouncing back take a look at this poll from quinnipiac university pulling institute is shows he has jumped four points in overall approval ratings since being exonerated just this week on charges of underage sex they project he will climb another ten ten points but even politicians who admitted to sex scandals found their reputations easy to rebuild one glaring example former president bill clinton he was impeached for lying to a federal grand jury and remarkably left office with

a historic sixty five percent approval rating and let's not forget about south carolina governor mark sanford who was using the taxpayers' dime traveling abroad to vacation with his mistress he is currently running for a congressional seat in south carolina and by all accounts will win it and make of this year and philandering senator david vitter who cheated on his wife with a prostitute he has rehabilitated his image so well he's running for governor all three went public with an apology. i. have been faced with what i want for my deep apologies to. and disappointed with these actions from mark. so it's like saying sorry goes a long way it appears that these politicians are made of tough one when it comes to bouncing back after scandals. well still ahead here on r t when you hear about the

border drug smuggling you probably don't think of a u.s. citizen a newly released report is shedding light on the smugglers from within our country's borders more of that after the break. the same story doesn't make it news. no puff pieces some tough questions. securing our borders remains a hot topic as the u.s. struggles to keep the bloody drug war in mexico from spilling into the u.s. but you'd be surprised to find out who exactly is caught in these drug busts it turns out it's not the drug lords or members of the infamous drug cartels four out

of five people busted by border patrol agents are u.s. citizens this according to a analysis from the center for investigative reporting earlier i was joined by the sense a calderon journalist and editor of t. want to press dot com who shared the latest on the ongoing drug war along the us mexico border i asked him if the findings in this report come as a surprise. i'm not i'm not very popular with there are reports out over that and all this is the number of these groups that are new to these bird liable and i can tell you the problem months before we were motivating based on press releases from the sunday go sector of the border patrol in california or the border in california that was a friend. and i'm a hollering and all and i remembered all of those years ago when the one of the main reasons why there are for more american was because the judges were more

lenient to somebody who was an american citizen and because of the overcrowding of the prison there were a lot with. the more lenient with us and do you think that's kind of debunked this idea that people have i mean especially here in the u.s. that most of the people that are caught transporting drugs are mexican smugglers. well it is you're right and there's a lot of hype ocracy and there's a lot of his there yeah an oversimplification of the phenomena and we in the media in both sides of the world without a lot of. responsibility the sense because he's a very calm hundreds. mexicans and the only way see them over and they. are in the us are struggling with the economy so when somebody or person with our part of the grows. the patient could be the same in both cases in both sides of the border i mean we know that it's

a big problem in our economy because we're going down and the u.s. side i mean the mexican side and so are many people who are more tempted but sometimes is they think it's so easy to get away with it but they just get involved in that and we see in also in the week there's some phenomena we've come of yours or we know has been called tapers where is to then it's pro u.s. citizen here from san diego california schools they've been loads of gross methamphetamine to their bodies because in walking for this or in order to build the know there were more difficult to do the entire they thought they were less suspicious of them a second going to the more yeah so several seven leaders from south america including bolivian president evo morales has said that the u.s. should take responsibility when it comes to drug trafficking do you believe that u.s. foreign policy in some ways has fueled the drug war. i think the party though i think

we need to be realistic is that again it's a very complex issue the main thing is there is a real market rhythm problem and a lot of that on the market or in prose in the u.s. makes the guns colombians people from any war where in the world will be striving to reach that market but if you can see that now there's all billions in your markets in europe you know the basic cartels are birds and they're armed there because there's a new market going on and this is symbol is if it's costly for to grow proper they're going to move for all the other places and more easily and is more profitable to sow drugs so both the congress and the border both the u.s. i'm not going to go you can be more realistic in the opposed to this problem. mr calderon appreciate you coming on the show and telling us your perspective over there now that you've seen at kind of first hand that was the sense a count of around journalist and editor at want to pass down. the battle over

drones continues and this time the cited state versus state thirty seven states have answered a call from the federal aviation administration to be the home of test sites for unmanned aerial vehicles looking for an economic boost the states are hoping to tap into a new part new market as the technology grows more prevalent at the same time say legislators are considering laws that would limit drone use and increase it and privacy are he's not a lopez has more well we've heard all about the privacy concerns that both the public as well as numerous lawmakers have voiced when it comes to an end aerial vehicles flying in american airspace but it looks like money might trump moral concerns last month the federal aviation administration put out a call to states looking for twelve science to test fly drones the plan is to see how these new avi's interact with and share air space with jetliners small aircraft and helicopters fifty teams from thirty seven states answer the call offering air

space technology and funding to help get the commercial drone program off the ground basically every state that you see here in green in return the state will learn bragging rights and a huge economic boost in terms of contracts and employment so let's take a look at a couple of the states that are fighting for this program florida was once the state that helped the u.s. shoot for the stars the nasa program put florida on the map during the space race and once again the state has its eyes on the sky albeit a little closer to home at least one point four million dollars has been set aside to help accommodate a possible drone program and the sunshine state is looking to add new locations to its map of test sites every day also in the fight for flight california the state is hoping to be as preeminent in the robotics industry as dr detroit was for cars proponents of these sorts of projects say you avi's can help track the health of crops fight wildfires conduct search and rescue operations and much much more essentially these machines will do everything that is too dirty. too dangerous or

too dolls for a pilot but while the majority of states battle for the skies a few of them are trying to rein in these mammals machine the small virginia city of charlottesville passed a resolution banning the use of drones against its forty three thousand residents for at least two years and charlottesville is not alone tallahassee has also passed a ban on drones and california massachusetts illinois texas washington kentucky and oregon are all thinking about putting the bosh on you a beef and leaf until the technology is better understood and better regulated anyway so on one hand there are huge economic benefits that this program offers and states are only now beginning to recognize the potential that these drones offer but with great power comes great responsibility a concept these states are becoming all too familiar with in washington meghan lopez r.t. and now on to the final frontier space or more specifically space x.

yesterday marked a successful splashdown for the company the space x. dragon capsule returned to earth on tuesday after finishing up another round of missions designed to transport cargo up to space but this was not without challenges as every mission experienced glitches such as docking problems thrusters shutting down and various to laze but it doesn't seem that this will stop now from using space x. anytime soon why because using the company is still less expensive than doing things in-house so this leaves us with one question as space travel becomes more of a private enterprise will cost become more important than quality we're going to leave it off there but from one of the stories we covered you can check out our youtube channel youtube dot com slash america and check out our website r t com slash usa you can follow me on twitter at liz wahl stay tuned breaking the set is coming up in a half hour we'll be back here at eight pm.