coming up on r t the us justice department spawning 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. and the spy games continue us already is in moscow accuse an american diplomat of being an undercover cia agent there are even calls for the suspects expulsion from russia we'll have the latest on the case in just a bit and the supreme court yesterday sided with monsanto against an indiana farmer it's a real life case of david versus goliath we'll hear what the farmer thinks of the ruling that's later in the show.

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

department or to correspondent liz wall 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 arabian 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 even the top two or three most serious leaks that never see it put the american people at risk and that is not hyperbole eric holder announced today 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 i think the effect on the media has already been felt in

. you have 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 liz wall r.t.

well team obama has been on floor full fledged crisis management mode when the press went after white house press secretary jay carney and 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 to the department of justice is secret investigation of a few reporters there is no shortage of scandal coming out this week out of d.c. so to talk in greater detail about what they pay top executives actually call a massive and unprecedented intrusion into how news organizations conduct business i was joined earlier by marcy wheeler she is an investigative reporter with mt wheeled dot net and i started off by asking her 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 the report of 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 in all of the blitz today have have confessed

that and so on. 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 was an argue that the public service interest of what they reported was not enough to merit turning over their sources but instead d.o.j. just went in 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 disaffected and they did in fact say that they used an exception an aura to not be able to communicate they said that i 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 marci 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 you 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 a 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 the a.p. 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. 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 i happened when the bin ladin right happened well i think that's a really good question and we think stocks in it 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 sources in 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 the bad the 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 at mt wheels on the net. well look like a scene right out of a cold war era spy thriller and undercover in american agent dressed in a wig and ball cap wearing dark sunglasses takes to the streets of moscow to gather intel and recruit spies ryan christopher fogle is the third under secretary of the political department of the us embassy in moscow he was arrested last night accused of being spied on the russian federal security service also known as the f.s.b. claims that fogle worked for the cia and was carrying out

a mission to recruit and for. moments for the u.s. the f.s.b. is calling mr fogle a persona non grata and has asked for his immediate expulsion from russia the u.s. state department confirmed that mr falwell was detained at the press briefing earlier this afternoon but provided very few details beyond that we can confirm that an officer it was from december the state was briefly detained and was released we've seen the russian foreign ministry announcement and we have no further comment just because he. can confirm for us that a. number of our mission was to take the list but wait a minute i thought that the cold war was over so why are the u.s. and russia still so distrustful of one another and why is all this spine happening when the two governments have been working so closely with one another over the bomb boston bombing case for instance well earlier i was joined by retired cia officer ray mcgovern who fill us in on the latest in the intelligence relations

between the u.s. and russia. 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 ski. 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 wigs 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 not 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 billy we get twice as much money in the intelligence community that we had before nine eleven i mean what to do with this money while 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 risky 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 is the rim of the mis chapter in chapman folly girl or help me we're all literally a t.v. star yeah but we traded ten for for a net one the f.b.i. got ten people hadn't done a thing yet but we're good for really good spies russian prison so that'll happen and i think what we have here is the interesting question is that they made

a public ok sometimes the russians or we would just sort of say hey we 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 a fist he's dictating to us he says whether 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 go back to the rock russians and just the men and the different future of our questions that's going to have photo 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. 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 us well i think it's cut and dry he had diplomatic immunity and under that kind of you know assuming the sorious right ok assuming it was a intelligence agent then he said diplomats undercover and he gets gets to go home and nothing happens to him now the real spies don't have the full amount of cover they're not so easily to provoke so would trap is that really that surprising for you i don't i don't understand all of these play the undercover spy world but is that surprising that he was so high up and allegedly a spy well actually high up you know it depends on how you look at it embassy he was a third secretary it's you know there's a second secretary there for secretary this you know political counselor you know so high up this a little a little exaggerated that he had to let it cover that's what counts and that's why

you can go home to his wife and kids in the break about what he tried to do in russia if as i say these facts resemble the truth now one has to be a little careful these weeks and these incredibly amateurish sort of things i wouldn't put it past the russian service to plant the several of those to make it look even more embarrassing to our man in moscow that was very interesting case and i'm sure we're trying to be learning a lot more about it in the near future i retired cia officer ray mcgovern thank you for your insights and most welcome while on the story of david versus goliath a young and feeble david uses a simple slingshot to take down a behaviorist of a warrior people love an underdog story but the reality is that sometimes sometimes david just gets the stuffing knocked out of him when he takes on a big opponent that was the case with a seventy five year old indiana farmer who took on a biotech giant monsanto in

a supreme court case over. patent rights on genetically modified soybean seeds he lost the supreme court unanimously sided with monsanto deciding that vernon hugh bowman had broken patent agreements when he used g.m.o. seeds to produce his own second and third generation crops r t correspondent ana stasia churkin a caught up with mr bowman out in the fields of indiana for an exclusive interview and she brings us his reaction to the supreme court ruling. multi-billion dollar globally operating biotech agriculture giant takes on a seventy six year old american farmer based in indiana. martin bowman's entire life is the sixty five acres of land run with machinery he jokingly refers to as junk one sound told 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

the beans for every plant the seeds cannot be saved and re harvested hey we've got a farmer over here that's a raisin brains it's got round of in and the judge said he wants los to 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 ancient round in diameter now you're kago put a patent number on them kenya and 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 move the nine to nothing according to us quoting by the rules the supreme court ruled unanimously

for months santo the issue is simply did i and brand on their product and i see no way. that i infringed on them 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 pay 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 concerns speak about how much of a precedent it will set affecting individual far future of agriculture versus biotechnologies moving forward i heard when i was

a little kid that progress leads to destruction and there are a danger in doing that i'm beginning to look now maybe it does i don't know if that future cannot archie sandborn indiana on may ninth the world made record books but not in a good way for the first time in human history the atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide in the air reached the daily average of four hundred parts per million carbon dioxide as a climate warming greenhouse gas that we continue to be warned about and that governments across the world continue to struggle to regulate and those struggles are showing in the data the u.s. national oceanic and atmospheric administration made measurements at the mana low observatory and hawaii and found that the highest levels of c o two is three million years are happening today meanwhile europe is trying to manage greenhouse gas pollution with an emission trading system also known as carbon credits

something unlikely here in the u.s. so to discuss this in further detail i was joined earlier by bob english he's a producer of prime interest here on r.t. and i first asked him why what are the chances of so slim that a president like president obama will get a cap and trade deal through congress. i think americans are good at detecting the scale 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. it obviously we are lowering our 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 at the same number every year and they have built 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 middle 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. now 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 a 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 people take this four hundred number so 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 promise 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 there 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 law prime interest producer bob english thank you so much for weighing in on the financial rougher questions of us all thank you while scrutiny over allegations that the i.r.s. is unfairly targeting groups like the tea party continues. to build the obama administration has come out time and again over the past few days to explain that it had no part in this controversial targeting so who did that for a look at the events leading up to the scandal the residents florrie harmfulness.

under that one event the previous four ruling of citizens united vs the federal election commission corporations and labor unions can spend unlimited gigantic sums of money on the election they can also register for tax exempt status as long as their primary purpose is not targeting electoral candidates after the really happened the number of political groups applying for tax exempt status more than doubled. yes one of the horrible effects of the citizens united case is that corporations can now buy elections basically so campaign reform groups have demanded that the government pays more attention to what money is going where and that the i.r.s. pays more attention to nonprofit as many of them are starting to spend huge amounts of money to influence election outcome so it's become a part of the i.r.s. as jobs to look for organizations that may be more likely to have too much campaign

intervention and that makes sense as long as i.r.s. takes a neutral look at all of the organizations in a nonpartisan way however it just came out that the internal revenue service has been paying extra special attention to groups that are critical of the government putting them under intense scrutiny organizations that used words including tea party and patriot in their applications for tax exempt status were flagged and asked for their list of financial donors a huge just lie awake in the i.r.s. policy they also targeted other nonprofits that criticize how the government was running the country that sauce to educate americans about the constitution and the bill of rights and that sought to educate the public and how to make america a better place to live that they guarded they also wanted to look at organizations involved in limiting or expanding the government or organizations involved in social economic reform movement pretty specific biased targets in other words

nonprofits or i'm happy with the way the government works that whom the i.r.s. has been targeting for scrutiny ever since the crappies that it's in the united ruling not the multibillion dollar corporations who invest millions in super pacs to buy political influence they are being particularly watched by the i.r.s. you know after the. travesty of this because the united ruling the i rest target now i'm profit who are unhappy with the government so whether you're a tea party that the guys are or think they're crazy whether you're a liberal or conservative it doesn't matter as long as you are an american you should be outraged tonight to talk about that by following me and twitter as the resident.

all right well that's going to do it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america and for the latest and greatest information on all of the stories we cover today and a few that we just did not have time to get to check out our website r.t. dot com slash usa don't forget to follow me on twitter at my going underscore lopez and don't forget to leave me your story suggestions comments and feedback i want to know what you want to see covered here on r.t. . is it possible to navigate the economy with all the details such as text and misinformation and media hype keep you up to date by decoding the mainstream hat by stating it's in your right.