coming up on r t the u.s. justice department spying on journalists the associated press reveals that the d.o.j. has been taking their phone records for months now supporters of the first amendment are demanding answers for this violation of the fourth estate more on the fallout coming up. authorities in moscow detained a member of the u.s. embassy under the suspicion of him being a cia agent there even calls for the suspects expulsion from russia we'll have the latest on the case coming up. and the supreme court yesterday sided with monsanto against an indiana farmer it's a real life case of david versus the goliath we'll tell you what the farmer actually thinks of the ruling later in the show.

it's tuesday may fourteenth five pm in washington d.c. i'm megan lopez and you are watching our t.v. well we begin with the latest developments coming from the associated press news organization the u.s. department of justice actually sees the phone records of twenty phone lines connecting journalists and editors ranging from washington d.c. to new york and hartford connecticut between the months of april and may of last year those phone lines cover one hundred journalists who worked in those bureaus through the cold the exact number of people actually affected by this is still known the a.p. is one of the most highly recognized and respected news agencies in the world so in quite it was quite a shock for those in the journalism community last night when we discovered that the department of justice has been secretly monitoring the organization allegedly trying to root out the source of leaked classified information now executives from the associated press and members of congress are taking shots at the d.o.j. r.t.

correspondent liz wahl has more. it's being called an unprecedented government intrusion the justice department secretly collected two months of telephone records from the associated press and its reporters. the a.p. believes this story prompted the secret investigation the cia uncovered a plot to bomb a u.s. bound airliner a plot originated in yemen and was carried out by al qaeda they were a band peninsula by reporting this al qaeda was put on notice that the cia had an inside look at their activities be a piece as the justice department did not say why they needed the information but says among the nearly two dozen telephone records collected at least five of them were from reporters working on the story in question this was a very serious. a very serious leak and a very very serious leak. i've been

a prosecutor since one thousand nine hundred six and i have to say that this is among if not the most serious it is within the top two or three most serious leaks that never seeing it put the american people at risk and that is not hyperbole eric holder announced today that he was recusing himself from this a.p. investigation the prominent news agency condemned the government's actions in a letter to holder yesterday associated press c.e.o. gary pruitt says quote these records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the news gathering activities undertaken by the a.p. during a two month period provide a roadmap to news gathering operations and disclose information about a.p.'s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know now the a.p. is asking for an explanation as to why the government pulled reporters' phone records without notifying them the worry now is the effect the news will have on the media and its sources the effect on the media has already been felt i mean you

. sources that are being shut down doors just being shut in people's faces now that was probably the intention the intention was to scare. the turn off the faucet in other words from leaks in the wake of the controversy white house press secretary jay carney reiterated the obama administration's dedication to transparency he believes strongly in the need for the press to be unfettered in its pursuit of investigative journalism he also believes strongly as a citizen and as president in the need to ensure that classified information is not leaked because it can endanger our national security interests this balance between transparency and national security has been a delicate one since nine eleven the obama administration has a history of aggressively going after whistleblowers prosecuting more people for leaking classified information than any other administration combined and washington was wall r.t.

while team obama was on full fledged crisis management mode when the press went after white house press secretary jay carney as well as u.s. attorney general eric holder during separate press conferences today from the latest details on the benghazi consulate attack to the i.r.s. controversy and even the department of justice secret investigation on a.p. reporters there is no shortage of scandals coming out of washington d.c. so to talk about in greater detail what a.p. top executives call a massive and unprecedented intrusion into how news organizations conduct business i was joined earlier by marcy wheeler she's an investigative reporter at mt weil dot net and she actually began talking about the d.o.j. and that the fact that this d.o.j. has taken records from journalists and why this case is so unusual. the thing that's most unusual about this is when the o.j. goes after reporters or reporters records they subpoena reported they give notice

and in this case they didn't do it in fact we still don't know when d.o.j. went and got these records no one and all of the blix today have confessed that and so normally the a.p. would have had an opportunity to challenge this subpoena and argue for example that it was too broad which it probably wasn't argue that the public service interest of what they reported was not enough to merit turning over their sources but instead just went and took the records and gave notice after the fact and that's only happened a couple of times before and not for anywhere near as many journalists as this affected and they did in fact say that they use an exception an aura to not be able to communicate they said that it would actually infect the integrity of fact the taggerty of this investigation now earlier this afternoon deputy attorney general actually responded to the atheist letter and he said this we strive in every case to strike a proper balance between the public's interest in the free flow of information and

the public's interest in the protection of national security and effective enforcement of our criminal laws we believe we have done so in this manner your thoughts on this balance marcy do you believe the attorney general the assistant attorney general at his word. you know not at all one of the thing that's not getting enough reported about this is that john brennan was responsible for the most damaging part of this leak by his own sworn testimony and yet he claims he's not he's neither a target nor a suspect and after he testified to the f.b.i. he was given a big promotion so if this leak is so damaging as eric holder suggested today he said it was one of the three two or three worst in his entire thirty some year career why did john brennan get a promotion after being a key participant in this leak that's. very good question that i'm sure a lot of people are searching for the answers to now before the attorney general's office went into a went after they phone records and conducted more than five hundred fifty

interviews and reviewed tens of thousands of documents why was this article in may of two thousand and twelve deserving of so much time and so much manpower in comparison to some of the other leaks that have actually come out leaks like the stuxnet virus that was attacking iran leaks like the leaked targeted killing program leaks like those that are happened when osama bin ladin right happens well i think that's a really good question and we think stocks net is still going on eric holder kind of dodged a question on that today. there's not much indication they're investigating the many many many many links on the targeted killing program probably because they have to admit which ones were white house sourced and which ones were trying to rebut white house claims which were false but when it comes down to it when you look at what happened with the story the reason the white house got so angry at the a.p. is because the a.p. noted that the white house had been saying at the time oh there's no threat of

terrorism around the anniversary of osama bin laden's killing and by exposing this on their terms on the a.p. terms were rather than on the white house terms which they were going to do the next day anyway it kind of hurt the white house's ability to spin this and not not contradict their earlier claims and i think that's what it comes down to because when you look at it the bad damaging part of the leak didn't come from the a.p. yet as far as we know the a.p. is the one target of this investigation. that was marcy wheeler an investigative reporter with mt will dot net. well looks like a scene right out of a cold war era spying thriller an undercover agent dressed in a wig and a ball cap wearing dark sunglasses takes to the streets of moscow to gather intel and recruit spies ryan and christopher fogle the third under secretary of the political department of the us embassy in moscow was arrested last night the

russian federal security service also known as the s s b claims fogle worked for the cia and was carrying out a mission to recruit informants for the u.s. the f.s.b. is calling mr fogel persona non-grata and has asked for his immediate expulsion from russia the u.s. state department confirmed that fogle was detained at a press briefing this afternoon but provided very few details we can confirm that it was really useful to say the spirit was briefly detained it was released we've seen the russian foreign ministry announcement and we have no further comment just . over can confirm for us that a. number of our mission was briefly detained whooshed but wait a minute i thought the cold war was over so why are the u.s. and russia so distrustful of one another and why all this spying when the two governments have been working so closely with one another over boston bombing cases and other ones earlier i was joined by retired there ray mcgovern who filled us in

on the latest between the u.s. and russian intelligence relations. the misconception is that there is such a thing as a friendly intelligence service there's no such animal you can cooperate very closely with another intelligence service but friendly is beside the point now there is a point for this kind of intelligence collection and there is a very high dude do not demean it all when i first come on with the cia we had a soviet spy named pentecost skee. who gave us all manner of very very important information including information that helped avoid the cuban missile crisis ok with that so there's a market for that the problem is supposed to be done with a degree of professionalism you're not supposed to get court you know especially with wigs and it looks like if you know if one assumes that the story is reasonably correct it does look like he was entrapped just like the f.b.i.

in traps ninety nine percent of the so-called terrorists here in this country you can entrap people by leading them on and very much looks like if this is his story is correct that this fellow is not very well trained and that he was entrapped and gosh you know what happens let's talk about that you're saying he was a very well trained or it doesn't seem like that like i said it kind of seems like it was straight out of a movie he had a wig he had sunglasses he had knives he had a money a currency in different places he also had a handwritten note that he was planning on handing to this person with the very specific instructions detail on it and he wanted that person to set up a g.-mail account of all things david petraeus also use g. mail accounts e-mail is used by so many people around the world to talk about this so why g. mail well i think g. mail has a special where you can be anonymous on g. mail and i don't know how to do that but apparently this one fellow did and i think

the major point here is that you're going to have boys will be boys. to have inertia here a whole bunch of spies were good billion we get twice as much money in the intelligence community that we had before nine eleven i mean we did the with this money well you try to recruit now what is the need to recruit russians like that will have to win won't know that until we find out what this russian was and who he was it was a ruse active in the caucasus but the major point is that this is par for the course what will happen now is will will expel some russian spy from new york or from washington but very much as was the case three years ago as the rim of the miss chapter in chapman follows a girl about me we're all literally a t.v. star yeah well we traded ten for for a net when the f.b.i. got ten people hadn't done a thing yet but we're good for really good spies out of the russian prison so that'll happen and i think what we have here is the interesting question is that

they made it public ok sometimes the russians or we would just sort of say hey we've got this guy this is really rethink it's get him out of here we don't want to we don't want an incident in this case poutine and the other said you know this would be a good shot across the swift boat bow of john kerry ok he came in and he sees he's dictating to a safe house where we should do about syria let's just just stroll the lesson you know we can look pretty powerful we can retaliate we can the shoot stuff off across his bow as well and the only sad part of all that is because we need russia syria russia is not going to give up on syria and the major flaw was saying well we got to get rid of assad and we can't do that all by ourselves and i don't think the russians are going to let us do it let's get back to the repercussions in just a minute in this new parts future of our questions that's going to have follow is protected by diplomatic immunity that's because he's he's very high up in the u.s.

embassy in moscow so he will be expelled from russia a film assumably but he. i won't be imprisoned for anything that he does so we expect this type of blowback as you're saying from these different organizations within russia and also within the u.s. well i think it's he had diplomatic immunity and under that kind of you know assuming the story is right ok assuming it was an intelligence agent then he's a diplomat undercover and he gets gets to go home and nothing happens to him now the real spies don't have diplomatic cover they're not so easily to provoke so address that was retired cia officer ray mcgovern. well a lot of news is coming out of washington today the white house and the department of justice both help press conferences earlier today officials responded to a host of questions also dealing with allegations over the internal revenue service unfairly targeting tea party groups as well as announcements from the department of

justice detailing a two month long investigation culminating the a collections of months of associated press phone records so to help me break all of this drama doubt political commentator sam sacks joins me now hi there sam so obviously there's a lot going on and a lot on capitol hill us is there actually going on as well let's start with the latest information about this i.r.s. candle here's part of attorney eric attorney general eric holder's press briefing today. the f.b.i. is coordinating with the justice department to see if any laws were broken in connection with those matters related to the i.r.s. those for i think as everyone can agree if not criminal they were certainly outrageous and unacceptable but we are examining the facts to see if there were criminal violations so sam what did we learn from today's press conferences with both us honey general eric holder as well as white house press secretary jay carney and how is congress reacting. when we learn that your obama administration

is outraged by what's but what's happened here press secretary jay carney stressed in the press briefing that neither he nor the president knew about any of these allegations until last week until friday when they came out he did say that the white house counsel office was notified a few weeks ago but were never went to the president now here on the hill there's just as much interest both in the house and in the senate on this story as there is seems to be in the white house and department of justice both relevant tax committees in the house and the senate have promised investigations into the ira as in this of course the house committee is chaired by a republican in the senate chaired by democrats and max baucus he's promised a probe into this and he had the backing yesterday of senate majority harry reid so you know the house is looking into it and the senate is looking into it the white house is interested in the department of justice is interested in this story isn't going to be going away anytime soon and the report hasn't even come out yet the

inspector general's report from the i.r.s. on just how this came to be and how how deep it went is supposed to come out in the next few days and i also understand as they said that the department of justice is looking into this i.r.s. matter and they're actually offering a possibility of a criminal probe against the i.r.s. can you talk about that. we i mean you were mean it remains to be seen whether any criminal activity we're going to have to wait until that report comes out but look this is going to be investigated considerably on the hill senator mitch mcconnell the republican minority leader in the senate said that we've only just scratched the surface of this issue and again we have the tax committees who are looking into it and if you've looked at. the republican flair for scandal whether it's been a fast fast and furious and how many hearings we've had on that benghazi how many hearings we've had on that you can guarantee that we're going to have a lot of hearings on this issue over the next few weeks and months and it seems to

be that both parties are interested in doing it this isn't a witch hunt on the right at all i mean the idea that the i.r.s. an independent agency is going after political targets is highly radioactive and something that both parties want to clamp down on so sam what are the ramifications of this in regards to campaign spending and specifically when it comes to the five a one c four. well you know these are all of it revelations about the i.r.s. are fairly new but this issue of five a one c four is isn't new to congress at all ever since the citizens united decision in two thousand and ten which kind of opened the door for people to spend unlimited amounts of money in our elections through these five a one c. fours congress has been on top of this issue and has been pressuring i.r.s. to do something about it and just to back up a little five a one c. fours or organizations that are supposed to supposedly operating the best interest of society they're given tax exempt status to do so and they don't have to reveal their donors that's what makes them so lucrative to people who want to use them but

the point is they can't engage in any blatant political activity well it sure seems that since two thousand and ten when you see these the proliferation of these five a one c four in the ads they're playing they seem to be advocating directly for the defeat of president obama or mitt romney or the people of the. bamma care or something like that their teenaged with a lot of electoral politics so you have democratic members of congress who've been pressuring the i.r.s. since two thousand and ten to look more into these five a one c. force and you see republicans member republican members of congress over that same time period pressuring the i.r.s. to not give extra scrutiny to not give in to pressure from democrats into fast track approval of all these five a one c four so it looks like there is really caught in this proxy battle between republicans and democrats on the hill and then they have to respond to this this surge in applications and they cut corners here obviously but this really comes out of congress not doing enough to regulate by going to be forced into fine whether or not they're acting politically or not

political commentator sam sacks reporting from the hill thank you so much when the story of david versus goliath a young feeble david uses a simple sling shot to take down a behemoth of a warrior people love the story of an underdog but the reality is that sometimes david gets the stuffing knocked out of him when he takes on a big opponents that was the case with seventy five year old indiana farmer vernon vernon hugh bowman who took on a biotech giant monsanto in a supreme court case over patent rights on genetically modified soybean scenes and lost the supreme court unanimously sided with monsanto actually deciding that vermin hugh bowman had broken prime agreements when he used g.m.o. saves to produce his own second and third generation crops are to correspondent on a sausage shark and i caught up with mr bowman out in the fields of indiana for an exclusive interview and brings us his reaction to the supreme court ruling. a

multi-billion dollar globally operating biotech agriculture giant takes on a seventy six year old american farmer based in indiana. martin bowman highlight is the sixty five acres of land run with machinery he jokingly refers to as junk monsanto the corporation behind dozens of lawsuits involving farmers all over the world treats and sells at three times the price of regular crops genetically modified soybeans able to resist weed killers the company demands that farmers repurchased these roundup ready soybeans for every plant the seeds cannot be saved and we harvested a we've got a farmer over here that's a raisin brains has got round of entering the judge very ones most after purchasing the soybeans once bowman later bought more at a grain elevator and replanted them to save money later in the season all my life. myself and other farmers have been able to go to grain elevators and buy grain and

planted if you assume this is fine to do because there are no trademark logos on each seed just on the bags you buy there are a little around me about a quarter of an h. round in diameter now you can go put a patent number on them kenya the farmers main argument is that soybean self replicate while monsanto and the courts claim he intentionally re harvested the seeds season after season without paying the patent owners we all knew the nine to nothing according to u.s. courts this farmer wasn't playing by the rules the supreme court ruled unanimously for months santo the issue is simply did i end brand on their product and i see no way. that i infringed on and of course. all crooks the other right right the us justice system said bowman used the blame to be in defense pirating a patent while claiming to simply be reusing

a crop of corporate giant versus a veteran farmer battle it out all the way up to the supreme court in the case over crops patents with her why a possible interpretations of the law judges rule against the farmer demanding that he pee tens of thousands of dollars worth of damages the fine eighty five thousand dollars money that bowman says he simply does not have and never will his lawyers work pro bono on the case well the supreme court says each case is individual concern speak about how much of a precedent it will set affecting individual farmers and the future of agriculture versus biotechnologies moving forward i heard when i was a little kid that progress leads to good destruction and there are very good tangent to it but i'm beginning to look now maybe it does i don't know just a future going to archie sandborn indiana. well on may ninth the world made record books for the first time in human history than the spherical levels of carbon

dioxide in the air reached a daily average of four hundred parts per million carbon dioxide is the climate warming greenhouse gas that we continue to be warned about by scientists and that governments continue to struggle to regulate but it seems that they're not able to keep up the u.s. national oceanic and atmospheric administration made the measurements at the mana low of observatory in hawaii and found that the highest levels of c o two and three million years were actually just discovered meanwhile europe tries to take to make efforts to manage greenhouse gas pollution with an emission trading system of carbon credits something unlikely in the u.s. that's actually going to happen to discuss this i'm joined now by paul. english is a producer of the r t financial show prime interest thank you so much for joining us i see you here on the new set so the chances are very slim that obama will actually be able to get this crack cap and trade system kind of sir congress and why is that i think americans are good at detecting the scam and i'm not saying

that it is but that's what americans are detecting this goes back to kioto americans were very much against because they don't like the rest of the world telling them what to think what to do now i'm not going to weigh in on the merits of anthropogenic global warming whether it's manmade or not but i'm here to say that these credit trading schemes are really enriching the bankers of the world in a big way they're the ones behind these exchanges and so tell me about the possibilities of other countries kind of following the u.s. so obviously we are lowering our coverage dioxide emissions certainly not by enough but the fact is that china actually spews ten billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air per year so china is the number one when it comes to these emissions do you think china's going to follow suit if it's not in their best interest china is in a very precarious position they printed a lot of money you know they have this ten percent g.d.p. that is magically have the same number

a year and they have they build entire villages entire cities that are unoccupied they're facing a lot of political headwinds and their economy could crash at any moment so if it's not in their best interest they're simply not going to go along with this now the u.s. is behind a carbon trading but it seems that many countries are starting to pick it up as more countries kind of take on carbon trading how will this affect the u.s. well that's what i was getting at earlier is that the exchanges that are set up and we even have one in the u.s. which is called the internet intercontinental exchange is set up for carbon trading and it doesn't have a lot of volume yet the big volume is in europe but who's behind this these exchanges are controlled by goldman sachs and j.p. morgan this entire thing is a wealth transfer scheme with bankers taking a little bit out of the. so even if you believe in heavy handed regulation is it really the wisest step to enrich the bankers in the process. a question i'm sure a lot of people should be asking right now but just aren't now what about border taxes on carbon carbon emissions is that fair well i'm

a free market person and i believe that if you're polluting or you're degrading somebody else's lifestyle because you're hurting their air your water supply that you should have to pay for that but at the same time this is not implemented to be particularly fair it's just a wealth transfer scheme and it's a way to balance out trade and import imbalances and this is usually something that's done at a monetary policy level or a fiscal policy level and this is just a disguise of a really old tariff scheme sure now the princeton professor actually came out he's a climate scientist at press and he said physically we are no worse off at a four hundred ppm than we were at say three hundred ninety nine ppm but as a symbol of the painfully slow pace of measures to avoid dangerous levels of warming it's somewhat unnerving really is there that much of a difference physically as the scientist says between three ninety nine and four hundred and will people take this four hundred number some more seriously why i think you have to realize to the largest greenhouse gas by volume is water vapor

and it's in magnitudes of order greater than what we see in carbon dioxide so i promised i won't get into the science of this but you made me do it so i'm sorry about that but i am going to say particularly i'm not worried about rising carbon dioxide levels but if i were this is the last way that i would try and do something about them with this cap and trade scheme so bottom line is that a good solution to figuring this out of both protecting the environment and also protecting our well as fiscally. you know looking from a free market perspective i would like to see people i would like to see the court systems more involved you know if you believe in a world court you should be able to sue another country and present a case for your rights to get money from them as compensation for whatever damages but you'd have to prove that in a court of a. prime interest producer bob english thank you so much for weighing in on the financial repercussions of us all thank you and that does it for now for more on the stories they cover go to youtube dot com slash r t america check out our web site r t dot com slash usa and make them up as.

well. it's technology innovation all the developments from around russia we've got the future of coverage. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.