ridiculous counterproductive stupid three words used by former state department spokesman p.j. crowley to describe bradley manning's conditions while detained and 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 these smugglers from within our country's borders more on that story straight ahead. and the sky over southern california may soon be the scene of a clash a clash of 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 eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching our t.v. we begin today with a look at the state of transparency in the u.s. today former u.s. assistant secretary of state for public affairs p.j. crowley resigned from his post 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 . many say that the military treatment of manning was harsh and can even be considered torture including crowley he called the treatment of manning quote ridiculous counterproductive and stupid shortly there after 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 bad. that you do not agree with his actions that they were damaging to the united states can you elaborate on that house out short. 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 be 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 did. after nine eleven 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 safely it's a moot point at this case in the aftermath of the controversy bradley manning was you 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 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 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 has allegedly training syrian rebels in jordan rebels excuse me in jordan can you comment on that. the united states has expanded. the level of support to the syrian opposition on the political side of trying to make the syrian opposition more effective and certainly this week in an arab league we'd meeting. the leader of the opposition al-khateeb has been seated in the eyes of the arab league the legitimate representative of the syrian people that's a symbolic step but then again from a political standpoint it's an important step now the challenge is to make the op

is. mission 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 it 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 then 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 as 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 kuranda 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 it 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 at guantanamo 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 but about the actual closing of that wealth 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 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 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. the safety of the hunger strikes eglantine him 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 resit it has more.

these i'm talking about because what time of day is most to be close by now mr president but whatever it's not so if you go to prison there's a quantum ok are on a hunger strike today has been a long time since february six think about weeks and weeks without eating or drinking initial number of prisoners starving themselves is around twenty but many people close to the prison say that the real number is much higher and that only a handful of the one hundred sixty six prisoners held there are not on the street whatever the exact number is something bad is going on the military actually has

a definition of what constitutes a hunger strike and that is missing nine consecutive meals so not eating for a full three days you are trying to not eat or drink anything for three days imagine you with the first day you can't hungry after a few hours ok i'll skip a meal no problem then that afternoon and evening roll around and you still don't eat or drink just after the first day i have a colossal headache and it added to the demands. to do that for two more days let alone several weeks you have to be a year with and to do that you have to be at a point where you're thinking that might not be as bad as the life i am living these prisoners are not trying to lose a few pounds to look cute in their new training dress they're protesting searches of their cells which they can test have or intrusive they're also. protesting let's see here what was it oh yeah indefinite detention without charge rights

many of the prisoners have been cleared for release for years and they're still being held for no discernible reason now maybe the us government has some secret reason for hoping maybe they know things about these guys that they aren't sharing with the world for national security reasons. personally i'm betting that it has more to do with our credit system that is rife with lower level thinkers shuffling paper work around but either way this is a matter this is america land of the free right it was the post to do things differently here we're supposed to be better than the rest of the world because we have an outstandingly ferrin justice system we have due process we value the individual we are champions of upticks everyone is bar carrick so how can we justify holding people as prisoners when we cleared them for release they're

supposed to be free yet here we are keeping them in prison who's the barbarian here as the prisoners continue to not eat or drink because they'd rather die of starvation than continue on like this maybe americans should start using this hunger strike as food for thought about their. might talk about that by me on twitter right. 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 and roll meant 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 it's the biggest wave in school closings ever and the last night 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 mika utrecht this is an editor for jacoby magazine and a contributing editor for in these times his book the chicago teachers union and free market education reform will be published this summer and he began by explaining what led to these school closings there have been a number of shutdowns in chicago over the years about seventy five since the ninety's when the schools started being shut down here. since a 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 enrollment 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 do you think this will affect the students and how are parents reacting to this. there seems to be a pretty uniform opposition in 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 and 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 school 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 of the foreclosures in order to hear this kind of public input has actually said you know the sky go public schools the bennett recently said that she would message she she took from those hearings which she didn't attend was that people understand why they are why they need to close all of these schools so they are going to be a are massive of people in these school closures are centered in communities mostly on the south and west side almost entirely on the south and west sides which are majority ever had the color and these are neighborhoods that have suffered from disinvestment for decades in this 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 school 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 to use chaos for students in this community certainly

a very big change for our 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 and 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 added some fortune maybe that they're the kind of owner and roman numbers that they claim but not much that they can be done about that i mean there's and there's there's sort of 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 has been or

a large part pushed by closing of public housing and declining public affordable housing a lot of neighborhoods but the second thing is that the district of the 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 and rollman 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. i mean there are 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 happened in the past are there just a way to sort of backdoor privatization to allow charter schools to expand in the state. that was like a you tricked assistant editor for dick open magazine and contributing editor for in these times. 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 the started as a conversation about men and his is other inappropriate actions including a look into his relationship with a donor in florida and then does allegedly flew on the donor's private jet to that in dominican republic a few years back but that may be where the wrongdoing as turns out those women were paid to say what they said about the senator or so they say and now looks like mendez is bouncing back take a look at this poll from the quinnipiac university poll and institute it has he has

jumped four points in overall approval approval ratings since being exonerated just this week on charges of underage sex they project that this will climb another ten points but even politicians who admitted to sex scandals found their reputations pretty easy to rebuild and 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 with vacation to vacation with his mistress he is currently running for a congressional seat in south carolina and by all accounts will win it in may 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. i've been unfaithful i want to again offer my deep sincere apologies to all. and disappointed with these actions from my past. so it looks like saying sorry goes a long way but it appears these politicians are made of teflon when it comes to balancing back after scandals. so that here on araa to you when you hear about border drug smuggling you probably don't think of a us citizen a newly released report shedding light on the smugglers from within our country's borders more on that after the break. the same story doesn't make it news no softball interviews no puff pieces some tough questions. let me let me we're going to let me ask you

a question. here. is what we're having a debate we have very nice. to be with you it's not it was just about staying there again you're going to be i don't want me to talk about the agreement we. securing our borders are means 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 an analysis from the center for investigative reporting earlier i was joined by the sendai calderon journalist and editor of t.

want to press dot com who shared the latest on the ongoing drug war along the u.s. mexican border i asked him if these reports come as a surprise i'm not i'm not very popular with the seller that this is the number of his. views but i can tell you the problem of the month before we were motives thing based on the person releases from the sun to go search the border patrol. that was a crime. these are not. all and i remembered all of that for all of these years ago when both one of the main reasons why they're more murders were because judges were more lenient somebody who was an american citizen of the overcrowding of the prison they were about with. a remote lead in with their sons and i do think that's kind debugs 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 if you're right and there's a lot of hype up or cea there's a lot of hysteria and oversimplification of the phenomena and we in the media in both sides of the world without a lot of the yield on the responsibility in that sense because they choose very calm hearts and mexicans and the only mexican border and. you are in the u.s. and i was struggling with the economy so when somebody or a person with our partners grows. the asian good 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 the wind down and the u.s. side i mean the mexican side and so are many more tempted but sometimes is they think it's so easy to get away with it but they used to get involved and are we

seeing also we are some of the with some of yours or we know as you call tabor's where is to then for a u.s. citizen here from san diego california schools to be loads of grows metal to their bodies because in walking for this for a border crossing building no there were more difficult to do the entire they thought they were less suspicious of a mexican going through 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 that part i think we need to be released because that again is a very complex issue the main thing is there is a market driven problem and as a lawyer they have been big just market on cross in the u.s. makes the guns along the lines people from any war where in the world will be

striving to reach that market but if you can see the. now there's all the news in your markets in your. car those are as good as in there are there because there is a new market going on this is an easy it's costly for to. hold the police easily it is more profitable to soldiers for those who congress and. both of us some of them are going to be more releasing in the. mr calderon appreciate you coming on the show and telling us your perspective over there you know that you've seen it kind of firsthand there that was dissent a calderon journalist an editor at want to press down. the battered old battle over drones continues and this time the fight is state versus state thirty seven states have answered a call from the federal aviation administration to be the home test sites for unmanned aerial vehicles looking for an economic boost these states are hoping to

tap into a new market as this technology grows more prevalent at the same time state legislator are considering laws that would limit drone use and increase it isn't privacy argues meghan 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 earn 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 dull for pilots but while the majority of states battle for the skies a few of them are trying to rein in these manless machines 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 caboche. on u a v's at least 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 that is going to do it for today but for more of the stories we covered you can always had to are used to can on you tube dot com slash r t america or check out our web site r t dot com slash usa and you can follow me on twitter at liz wahl for now have a great night.