internationally in the very heart of moscow. about the rest of the news yesterday the senate judiciary committee heard testimony on the obama administration's remote assassination program for ria al it was me young man a man who was a village was destroyed by a drone attack was one of the speakers he accused the us of harsh terms of pushing your many into the arms of islamic militants. now however when they think of america they think of that that they feel from the drones that whole vote of it heads they need to fired missiles and he thought what the violent militants

had the previously failed to achieve one drone strike accomplished in and instant it is now and against america. this is not an isolated insistence the drone strikes the face of america too many images. president obama was elected in two thousand and eight on a tide of anti-war sentiment unlike his rival for the democratic nomination hillary clinton who had voted for the iraq war as senator from new york in two thousand and three he had openly criticized that conflict during his time in the illinois state senate and unlike john mccain the republican nominee for president then senator obama initially opposed the much wanted two thousand and seven iraq troop surge and obama was elected in two thousand and eight many of us believe that we were put in the darkest parts of the bush years behind us now five years into the obama administration and three months into the private president's second term the united states is engaged in numerous covert wars across the globe and the controversy will

drone assassination program has left countless dead in south asia africa and the arabian peninsula so what happened how did barack obama the so-called antiwar candidate in two thousand and eight become the president of the kill list and can the united states ever find a way out of what seems to be a state of permanent war for more on this i'm joined now by jeremy scahill national security correspondent for the nation and author and producer of the new book and film project dirty wars the war is a battlefield jeremy welcome. thank you tom thanks for joining us great to have you back with us your book and film are titled dirty wars why did you call for that title why did. well you know i think that what we've seen over the past five years of the obama administration is an attempt to sort of portray the drone wars and the cruise missile attacks that the obama administration has really expanded as

a clean form of warfare the idea that there's not many civilian deaths as a result of them that you know twenty or thirty leading figures of al qaeda have been taken down and that this is somehow an alternative to the large scale troop deployments that marked the bush cheney era and i wanted to just take a take that full frontal and say there is no such thing first of all as a clean war but secondly the so-called clean wars are actually killing a tremendous number of civilians and causing a lot of anti-american sentiment to rise around the world but tom and i know you've covered this over your career as a writer and as a journalist it also is a sort of tip of the hat or a kind of tip of the hat to a different era in u.s. history of the dirty wars in central america where you had the reagan bush administration funding death squads propping up right wing dictatorships using mercenary forces and relying on covert action around central latin america and i feel like we're doing that same thing right now under the obama administration but

in many cases on the other side of the globe in the horn of africa on the arabian peninsula in countries like the philippines and indonesia and increasingly in north africa so dirty wars is both a statement about the fact that there is no such thing as a clean war but also saying that we're essentially returning to a very dark period in u.s. history just a. decades earlier that's interest in the correct me if i'm wrong in my recollection of history please cherami but my recollection is the back in the eighty's during the dirty wars in south and central america particularly central america john negroponte was involved fairly heavily in that and was accused at least of being involved in the death squads in el salvador and or one of those countries in that region and i recall i was on the air i was doing my radio show when it was announced the john negroponte was going to iraq and right i said on the air. if history is any indication if the pass any occasion in the future probably in the

next few weeks or soon we're going to start seeing people with their hands tied behind their backs in a ball in their head and we did now i'm not sure i don't know what to make of that if frankly horrified me is negroponte you know am i making to him i just like doing an alex jones here coming up with a b girls he'll no no i mean you know what john negroponte for several years of the bush cheney administration was a key figure he was the director of national intelligence and was one of the main figures in kind of shaping u.s. what was called u.s. counterterrorism policy but also dealing with the worsening situation in iraq and the widespread multi ethnic and in that the that the americans were facing after they went into iraq in an invasion that people like paul wolfowitz claimed was going to pay for itself through oil revenue and where u.s. troops were supposed to be greeted with flowers and candy as they rolled in to conquer baghdad and your historical recollection of his role in central america is

an interesting one because negroponte was in honduras at a time when it was a staging ground for the contra war in nearby nicaragua and also at a time where you had a death squad in honduras battalion three sixteen that was being supported by the cia. and it was involved with all manner of human rights violations including the killing of catholic priests and people who had the audacity to stand up against the right wing forces the u.s. was propping up and negroponte would send back these reports to the to the state department that made these death squads in the words of one human rights analyst who studied the situation at the time look like you know sort of glowing human rights reports from geneva switzerland and so negroponte really was one of the key figures in that bush era but you fast forward to the present and some of these same policies that we saw really flourish in a devastating violent way in iraq being continued under the obama administration you know interesting in your film you identify an incident card dead is in

afghanistan as a catalyzing moment for you what happened what was the catalyst yeah you know tom i mean i've been covering these u.s. wars actually since the last time we had a democratic president in power i started off in journalism when bill clinton was president and covered the war in yugoslavia covered the undeclared war in iraq that took form and to the took place in the form of economic sanctions and these so-called no fly zone bombings and when i went to afghanistan though with rick reilly the director of a film is a great an embedded journalist himself we were investigating a series of u.s. night raids and one of the raids that we investigated really did shake my world as a human being and as a journalist and it was an incident that took place in february of two thousand and ten when u.s. special operations forces raided what they thought or had been told based on the faulty intelligence was the home of a taliban militant who was preparing for a suicide bombing and they raid this home and they end up killing

a number of men and two pregnant women and it turned out that the family was in fact not taliban but rather supporters of the united states the home of a senior afghan police commander and they were having a party in this home to celebrate the naming of a newer child that it's a tradition to. the sixth day everyone celebrates the selection of a name for a newborn and they ended up killing these people and instead of realizing and sort of owning that they had on faulty intelligence gone in and really made a tremendous mistake and ended up killing these people the forces that did this actually covered it up and they dug the bullets out of the women's bodies and then nato released a press release saying that u.s. special operations forces had come across this sort of gruesome scene and they attempted to blame it alternately on the taliban but also on an honor killing implying that the families had killed their own family members and some sort of an honor killing and so a very courageous journalist named jerome starkey from the times of london myself

and other people began investigating it and eventually we found out that the force that conducted this raid was in fact the joint special operations command the most elite force in the u.s. military the president's elite force commanded by admiral william mcraven who has been promoted under the obama administration to become commander in the aftermath of that massacre commander of all u.s. special operations forces across the globe that's a sock is the acronym for that is that correct. was there in the in the famous picture in the white house of the white house of the. war room or situation or whatever it was as they were killing osama bin laden. was there a jason connection yeah i mean it's interesting when i saw that picture that was released there was an interesting story behind it that was not the situation room what happened is that president obama had gone to try to maintain some semblance of normalcy for the media and he played golf that day and he had his eighteen rounds

and have to nine rounds so he comes back in the president is still in his golf outfit he's wearing the jacket he's got the golf shoes on and he walks in and there was a room at jason to the situation room where general brad webb who was admiral mcraven is assistant at j.c. was in a sort of auxilary room set. these monitors so that they could watch it in real time and the plan was for the president and his advisors to be in the actual situation room and not have the president sitting in the room watching all of the details as it went on so that there could be some maintenance of of plausible deniability well the president comes in and a couple of other officials have gathered in that room around these guys and the president his advisors sort of try to say we'll go into the situation room he says no i want to sit where the action is happening so the president ends up sitting on a folding chair in the background and the man at the head of the table was not the commander in chief but rather make raven's deputy adjacent so he was clearly in control of the operation if you look at that photo you know he's got the fruit salad of medals on his. breast of his of his jacket and the commander in chief or

the most powerful military in the sitting on a folding chair just beside him is that. is is there something intrinsically wrong with that i mean it seems like as president if you're running a war you would want to delegate some pieces of it to the people who do that professionally no question i think i think though that you know if you if you rewind back in time and you remember sort of what news coverage of special operations forces and looked like prior to you know may of two thousand and eleven there was very little discussion about these forces in the public media admiral mcraven was not a publicly known figure there was very little available about him line and there were you know there were sort of official bios floating around about him and it was difficult to find mention of him in the press and for me you know what was sort of interesting about this is that this force that had spent its second since one nine hundred eighty when it was created in the shadows all of a sudden now was was having one of its leading. put out in

a photograph circulated by the white house for all the world to see and so i think it was just an interesting moment and you'll recall after that the bin laden raid disney corporation tried to actually trademark the term seal team six and of course they failed but and then the production of zero dark thirty was it was a totally different animal at that point it was based on this book called kill bin laden by dalton fury it was going to be the story of a sort of failed mission to get bin laden they quickly wrote the script and were given a lot of access to sensitive materials by the white house so for me that picture was just sort of a an interesting symbol of the evolution and the rise and prominence of j. sachs and the willingness of the obama administration to sort of own this force and say they're at the forefront the tip of the spear of our policy and. jarrett well the follow up question let me let me pick it up after the break more with jeremy scahill writer.

with. technology innovation all the developments from around russia. potentially deadly blizzard taking aim for the northeast it's expected to hit stunning in a few hours from new york to maine we have team coverage of the storm. but what we're watching is the very heavy snow moving into boston proper earlier today it was very sticky you can see it start to become much more powdery down here the bottom line there's still a lot of snow out here

a good place for snowball fight. decent district pretty incredible day there and even record snowfall throughout much of in life nobody's allowed to be driving license of emergency vehicles are exceptions. wealthy british style. is no time to. market so why not come to. 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 a report on our.

international and world in the very heart of moscow. welcome back i'm joined now by jeremy scahill national security correspondent with the nation author and producer of the new book and film project dirty wars the war is a battlefield germy let's go back to first of all by the way my apologies i don't know if they're doing the construction on your building or the building that you're in new york next door up stairs downstairs wherever it is but occasionally will that sound is coming through and to our to you and to our our listeners or viewers but

actually sounds like a it sounds a bit like a very loud drone yes it's the that's that's creepy maybe it is with us and i ne up tell me about erik prince and blackwater that this would be the first time you and i talked was one when your book blackwater and come out some time back how did you . you learned that erik prince was fleeing the united states and would you use that word clean to characterize it and and isn't his family heavily involved in michigan politics. there's a lot there i also want to remind you tom that you you interviewed blackwater would never talk to me when i started investigating that but you interviewed martin strong at the time was a vice president of blackwater and during your interview he said jeremy scahill doesn't know anything about blackwater and that was before you know they really went down in flames in that iteration of blackwater and then they rebranded of course what you know erik prince was facing a situation when he was the head of blackwater and of course he founded the company where they were being investigated by congress they were being investigated by the

f.b.i. they were being investigated by the bureau of alcohol tobacco and firearms five of the senior people under erik prince had been indicted on federal conspiracy and weapons charges and prince had sort of gotten fed up with things and was trying to figure out an exit strategy for himself and i i discovered that erik prince had plans to leave the united states because a guy who i had never heard of at the time in the world had never heard of at the time emailed me and he didn't provide me with any classified intelligence he didn't have any inside information from the company itself but because of a personal connection of his he knew someone that had information about the prince family's movements and this individual facilitated me getting information that indicated that erik prince was planning to move away from the united states at a time when when when there was a lot of smoke around blackwater and to relocate. in the united arab emirates and they the and so i this story based on that and then i corroborated it with other people that i have sources i had inside of blackwater and what is amazing is that

the person that wrote me that first email that tipped me off to this was in fact bradley manning who is the soldier that admitted during his court martial to providing the diplomatic cables to wiki leaks as well as the what was called the collateral murder video of u.s. forces in iraq gunning down a number of iraq. civilians including two reuters journalists and i didn't the name didn't ring a bell with me i didn't know who he was and in fact i you know i didn't realize that it was bradley manning until well after i had done that story and he became you know an internationally known figure but i don't want to share too many of the details because i do want to protect the individual that ultimately gave me the information that i could document but i will say that what what struck me from bradley manning's e-mail is that this was an incredibly thoughtful guy who seemed very concerned about what he was seeing in the world and very concerned about the

idea that someone like eric prince was able to move around freely when his company had been involved with so much death and destruction in iraq and elsewhere and the tone of it was it was a very well written e-mail in the tone of it was of a very serious person concerned about his country and concerned about the role of mercenary forces in the world and the death of anwar al a lockie correct my pronunciation place plays oh you got it ok plays a central role in your film in your books narrative how did this american citizen become such a huge target for the u.s. security apparatus who was. i mean i've been fascinated for for many years at the story of anwar lock in fact when i was a young producer at amy goodman show democracy now after nine eleven i remember seeing a lockie on t.v. in the united states because he was an at a very large mosque in virginia and he was profiled in the washington post and i had wanted to book him on our show because what he was doing was he was denouncing

the nine eleven attacks and saying that al qaeda had heard of the religion of islam but also talking about the struggles facing many muslims in the united states remember that sort of campaign of fear mongering that took place in the rounding up of muslims and the opening of course of guantanamo and there were vigilante attacks against not only muslims but also sikhs and other people that that that whose religion. that many people ignorantly assumed to be that of muslims and so businesses were attacked and others in amara locky was really an articulate guy in describing what the situation was like for many muslims in the united states and so i he was already on my radar and then i didn't hear anything about him until two thousand and nine when major nidal hasan walked into the fort hood army base that he was on in texas he was an army psychiatrist and committed a massacre of his fellow soldiers and then stories appear that that nidal hasan had

been in touch with anwar a lockie who was in hiding in yemen and he was described as this radical. and so i started investigating that story and we know from the declassified e-mails between a lock in the doll house on that u.s. investigators had the term that i lucky had nothing to do with that plot but what i like he did do which i think all of us as americans found offensive is that he praised the attack and called the doll hassan a hero he wrote a blog post saying that and a lot he already was a very popular figure in the english speaking muslim world his tapes and writings were were being read across the globe in his lectures were being listened to and the so the obama administration really intensified its heart in its hunt for a lockie and after the christmas day bomb plot this underwear bomber umar farouk abdulmutallab tried to bring down the airliner over detroit u.s. officials started leaking to the press saying that he had in fact blessed that operation and was involved with planning that operation i haven't seen any evidence to suggest that that was the case i don't know that it isn't the case but what we

do know is that the president signed a death warrant for a u.s. citizen and he was ultimately killed without having ever been charged with a crime report to trial and his son as well two weeks later a sixteen year old son an american citizen was killed and no one has ever explained why and there's so much more to this and it's in your book and it's coming out in your movie. so are you jeremy scahill for the great. reporting that you have done thank you so much for being so thanks for your work over the years. odds are you've never heard the phrase negative externalities corporations and their boards know all about them but most americans don't understand even the concept but it's important and negative externality is

a cost of borne by all of us that was produced by a private entity and then dumped on os x. sternal ised from that is news to us externalities reduce the cost of business for corporations which in turn increases their profits while the tab is picked up by you and me the taxpayer the worker and or the citizen for example air pollution is usually considered a negative extra anality in the business world air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels causes damage to public health cancers asthma causes damage to crops and the overall environment polluting global warming but do the coal or oil or natural gas companies pay for any of these costs no of course not they externalize them to us you and i are forced to pay for the cleanup of this building and the damage and cancers that it costs while the corporations pump out and you know all

this stuff from the smokestacks increase their profits because we're picking up the bill for the extra anality of their pollution. other examples of negative externalities include things like noise pollution water pollution and the over harvesting of fish but all of these are by products of corporations doing business all are harmful and expensive to the rest of society and all are usually externalized by corporations so that you and i pay the caused and the corporation keeps the profit profiting off of externalities is fact is at the core of the business model for many corporations in america and across the globe and corporations are profiting off them big time according to a report by the t e b b business coalition the top one hundred extra analyses of business as the months the estimates that the global top one hundred environmental extra valleys are costing the economy worldwide around four point seven trillion

dollars a year this includes the economic cost of greenhouse gas emissions loss of natural resources loss of nature of the services such as carbon storage but forests climate change air pollution a related health costs the whole bunch of them and the primary production and processing sectors analyzed in the report like the oil production the food prizes in industries are estimated to have extra anality costs totaling seven point three trillion thirteen percent of global economic output in two thousand and nine. now you understand why industrial giants like the koch brothers and others are so enthusiastic to fund libertarian think tanks the talk about less government regulation they want to make sure they can continue to x. stern ally's their costs to you and me and they can keep the profits and they've been incredibly successful particularly since reagan began slowing down a rolling back the work that nixon put into place with agencies like the e.p.a. you and i and working people around the world are paying these trillion dollar

price tags while those writable for them the giant corporations of the world are continuing to rake in record profits as long as there's no or little cost to them because you and i in the environment are paying the bill the more they devastate environmental extra nowadays and the more profits they make this lack of defining valuing and charging for corporate externalities makes it more expensive for all of us in society and more profitable for a very small group of very large corporations and their billionaire owners this is not how markets should work corporations should not be allowed to pollute our environment and cause public health problems and then just pass the buck to the taxpayers of course dotel out of the world's corporate elite at the core of the libertarian message is the idea that corporations shouldn't have to pay for the extra maladies they create when libertarians talk about deregulation they're really saying well. on society you guys pick up the tab for the cost of not even access to

stop pay or even help with the cleanup. but again this is not how markets should function if corporations were forced to pay for the extra nowadays they create we see a truer and more balanced marketplace and more importantly we'd almost certainly see less damage done to our environment and society on a daily basis if the axons in the b.p.s. and the koch industries of the world were forced to pay for the emissions that they put out through something like carbon taxes or pollution taxes they would have more of an incentive not to pollute the environment because as we all know the biggest fear of any corporation is increasing costs it's time to stop letting corporations openly pollute our air damage our ecosystems and destroy our environment while you and i are forced to pick up the bill and deal with the asthma's and the cancers several nations across europe have successfully put a price tag on actualities including car and head of corporations the bill even china is discussing a carbon tax both to discourage pollution and promote the use of renewable energy

it is time america do the same thing we need to aggressively identify those corporate extra analyses both what they are and what they cost and finally hold corporate america responsible for the tab that they've been letting the rest of us and nature itself pick up and that's the way it is tonight wednesday april twenty fourth two thousand and thirteen don't forget democracy begin with you get out there get active tag you're it.

they say.

hello and welcome to cross talk where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle terrorism a word we hear all of the time but what do we mean when we use it is terrorism a specific form of criminality practiced under certain circumstances focused on a specific group of people when we consider weapons is there much that separates handmade bombs and high tech drones ultimately it would appear the only difference between justice and terrorism is whose side you're on.