it's. worse for the little thing go lie down to the. radio guy for a minute. i want. to give you never seen anything like i'm still. am having martin in the break in a set today is the first day of d.c.'s annual whistleblower summit in this morning i was able to sit on a panel with some other journalists to talk about the obama administration's crackdown on whistleblowers it's quite unfortunate that we're seeing this kind of attack on the press happened under obama considering how one of the foundations of his presidential platform was the urgency to protect whistleblowers in fact for the last five years obama's website changed our gov has maintained a pledge to protect them by stressing the importance of encouraging people within government agencies to expose wrongdoing more specifically it reads obama will

strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste fraud and abuse of authority in government obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and have whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process for access to courts and due process so that the bradley manning for sadness solitaries sell for years before seeing his day in court or edward snowden who is already being deemed bit guilty in a court of public opinion and can't even come back to the us because he knows his face concealed well don't try to look for this pledge now because of last week and it no longer exists as obama's whistleblower protection declaration as well as all those other promises are now completely scrubbed from the internet according to sunlight foundation which first published the news what will the front splash page for change dot gov as a link to the main white house website for years you can still continue on. see the

materials an agenda laid out by the administration this was particularly helpful for those looking to compare obama's performance in office against his initial vision for reform yes perhaps obama's embarrassed about how many glaring contradictions exist between his initial platform and shameful performance as president maybe it was too hypocritical to claim to care about whistleblowers while being the all time worst president for whistleblower protection i guess it's easier to rewrite history than it is to stay true to your word and if this pisses you off to enjoy me and that's very. little for a rubber sheet or anything like that. as the u.s. economy continues to tread the waters of the great recession some industries are doing better than others and if war is your profession then business is booming take for instance northrop grumman one of america's largest defense companies the

corporation was just awarded a government contract worth up to two hundred ninety four million dollars for navy weaponry as it seems that military spending isn't slowing down the america's wars are allegedly drawing down and when the military spending taxpayer money well you can rest assured it's being wasted case in point northrop's two hundred and twenty three million dollar global hawk drone aircraft vertical problems yet despite the lack of demand for the drone production of it continues comes as no surprise considering the enormous lobbying power nor for congress get this the company has reportedly given nine hundred forty one thousand dollars in donations to keep lawmakers voting on the global hawk program according to policy mike it's apparently the price tag for buying off the right congressmen to keep these useless military toys in production but once upon a time blowing the whistle on this type of irresponsible spending meant an end to wasteful programs like the global hawk. rock that's at least the case for

a next guest james hall stricter former auditor of northrop grumman who founded the company was inflating its material cost to increase government payouts after he blew the whistle was named a whistleblower of the year in two thousand and seven by the organization taxpayers against fraud however this is after a fifteen year battle against a defense giant so to talk about his case the current climate for whistleblowers i'm joined now by james starr i have a how are you doing thank you for having me on the street so you're coming you're touring around the country to about this book and just just about your story first before we get into what happened and what you think about obama's remove. you know his pledge to protect whistleblowers from the website while i haven't looked into that myself every so i can't really answer one way or another on it and so this is news to me what you're just telling me and so i apologize if i can't have a definitive position on that ok let's talk about your story how did you find out that northrop grumman was falsifying and formation and how much money were they

actually stealing from the government while it began back in one thousand nine hundred seven when i was taking a look at how materials were moving through their inventory system and i've seen that it looked like they were charging three and four times for the same part parts were being returned to the vendor fix and then charge as a new part on them back in and i brought this all to their internal security as well as to my supervisors and then they charge they tried to get me to help them to to cover up what they were doing and the things that i was bringing to their attention and the next thing i know i had a federal agent on my doorstep telling me that if i didn't cooperate with them and talk to him he was going to put me in jail and come to see my hand cops and so that began a year and a half journey that i was cooperate in undercover with the federal agents and in their investigation of northrop grumman let's let's back up just a tiny bit as you just said some really explosive things first of all how much money are we talking about in terms of stealing from the government that well we had alleged that it was about a one point two billion dollar loss is what the. we were looking for and at the end

of the day after seventeen and a half years they recovered one hundred thirty four million dollars from northrop they paid out of court was not. admitted to any wrongdoing and when you went years the period that arthur graham they actually said we want you to help you cover up these transactions well they wanted me to help them to hide it as they put it. from the customer and ultimately a customer was the government and so what happened next he said a federal agent was at your door yes. and he told me that he wanted to talk to me and i said i can't verify your credentials you could be a foreign agent or you could be just someone from northrop trying to set me up and so they'll verify your credentials and then i'll talk to you and he says that's not what's going to happen they're going to scare the heck out of you you won't talk to me i'll come to see you with handcuffs and i put your in jail so this is before you reach out to the government yourself you have to say yes. so it took fifteen years i mean you know what happened in the meantime why did it take so long to

finally settle and get this case closed well after three years the department of justice declined to intervene in the case and so we took on the case ourself and ultimately seven different law firms represented me under the false claims act and we continued to case for an additional ten years gathering information and documentation and if you remember abbie this is all before the year of computers and so everything had to be done by hand and three million paper documents and seven million computer entries that we did ultimately get so by two thousand and one the department of justice came back into the case and really intervened and it's something that never happened before in the history of the united states that ten years after declamation they came back into the case and ultimately four years later it was settled. back up to that agent who came to your door i mean did you ever follow up with who this person was why he was threatening you was that ever a person at all well in the sense that both threatening me he wanted to talk to me he just basically put it on the line. for me that if i were involved in that

coverup i could be ultimately held responsible facing a felony myself if i didn't speak with him as though he was just putting me on notice is that the course he would take and so of course i cooperated with and for the next year and a half i was undercover taping documents to my body being asked to wear wires and meetings wow let's talk about today i mean as you said this was in the late eighty's i find they didn't settle until two thousand and seven by martin thousand and five of two thousand and five what about the climate now do you think that we're seeing the less people speak out less whistleblowers really having the gall and gumption to speak out now that we're seeing a kind of this crackdown on whistleblowers well more than ever in a situation right more than ever every i'm sorry there seemed to be afraid i spoke with several today at the summit that you had mentioned earlier and it seems to be the running commentary of many of the whistleblowers they don't want to come forward don't want to talk and and really that's. that's by intention that's to

suppress that that that avenue of free speech as it were to be able to feel that you're safe and that you have someone who has your back. your case was celebrated of course you were exposing government you know something that the government was interested in that's an event coverage was feeling money of course they're going to celebrate it but why didn't there is an enormous discrepancy between between the way that you were treated and the way that people who are exposing government criminality and war crimes are treated while i was working within the law with them underneath the false claims act and the statutory protections afforded to whistleblowers whereas there are others who have decided to maybe take their information to the poll of public opinion and so they're operating outside the law and so those with those protections that are put in place to protect what some consider a protective act they don't have those and so then they're at the mercy of those people who can enforce those laws and sometimes there is no mercy. right. you know

is there any sort of oversight that exists right now the federal level to prevent this kind of fraudulent behavior with taxpayer money being invested in these defense corporations do you think that this type of activity still going on well absolutely absolutely it's becomes what's known as the cost of doing business if you can keep the money and pay ten cents back on the dollar if you'll do it every day all day i mean it's just a cost benefit if you take a dollar you give back ten cents and you keep ninety eight cents and of course they do that and because there is no accountability and no one is held accountable they still keep their jobs they don't lose their jobs and right now in fact there are more whistleblowers right now in jail than there are of the criminals who perpetrated the crimes that blew the whistle about and you. you offered legal constant consultations to whistleblowers to people who want to come out what advice would you give to people in the audience who might be watching and saying you know i i want to speak out but i'm scared well let me cry i have a degree in law but i don't have

a bar license and so i give advice through an organization of taxpayers against fraud and that's the taft out of oregon it's a group of attorneys who have come together to help whistle blowers to bring new suits that when they become aware that the government has done big bender fraud and from financial means well then they can join and participate in that litigation to recover those stolen taxpayer dollars and in fact every since one thousand nine hundred sixty the false claims act has returned forty billion that's with a b forty billion dollars to the physical fast and corporations don't like that well i'm glad that there are people like you in the organization that you represent really helping people and there is mobilized efforts of people to help you if you're out there and you want to blow the whistle on something thank you so much for coming on telling your side of the story james hall reached or former north of common whistleblower shake you so much for having me on the scene everything created.

guys despite some optimistic reports indicating that america's financial situation is getting better i can assure you it's not a new study by the associated press shows that eighty percent of adults in the us struggle with joblessness and are either in or near poverty guys that's four out of five adults and one of the areas being hit the hardest is the housing market even americans who are barely keeping their heads above water could still end up fighting the big banks just to keep their homes take for example the case of katie barnett after going on vacation for two weeks katie return to find their home had been ransacked and most of her belongings stolen and much turned ismay resident found out that it wasn't burglars or random vandals it was a bank see first national bank plan to repossess a foreclosed home across the street from barnett and hired

a contractor to do the dirty work but instead of actually bothering to check the house numbers on the mailbox the hired thugs broke into barnett's home took all of her things and changed all of the locks as a result barnett lost eighteen thousand dollars worth of personal property after all was said and done the banks excuse for reprocessing her home instead of the actual foreclosed. he has pointed them in the wrong direction gee i wonder if the g.p.s. had pointed him up a bridge they would have jumped to but it's been wrongly foreclosed on losing all of your personal belongings isn't traumatizing enough first national bank doesn't seem all too eager to fix its glaring mistake c. barnett created a list of stolen valuables that she wanted the bank to replace seems like a fair request write well check out what the bank said in response. see katie fairly and equitably for her inconvenience and loss but has blocked it paying the

eighteen thousand dollars she's asking for and demanded that i had receipts for all of my stuff that they threw away and i said well you know first of all i don't have receipts for all my stuff i wasn't expecting a bank to come and accidentally repossessed my house and throw it all away while i don't even know where to begin first they break into the wrong home and they balk at the idea of making up their mistake well this is kind of a horrifying errors in a recurring problem across the country right away that is by almost every major bank according to court records over fifty lawsuits have been filed from homeowners who have suffered similar trauma of a wrongful home foreclosure some of these cases involve stolen family heirlooms or even kidnapped pets despite the fact that foreclosures can only legally occur in a vacant home and most cases even the most glaring signs of the houses occupied are no word like the house being fully furnished having all of its the lights on or having to manicured lawn no but perhaps the most bizarre case of all is that of

michigan homeowner nancy cox she came home from work one day surprised to find her personal possessions out in her front yard smashed to bits with a sledgehammer her garage had also been vandalized with a giant drawing of a clown and a timeline that read another job well done i'm sorry but these guys working for a bank or gang because the line between the two is too blurred to see. really what's the difference when banks are actually hiring vandals to terrorize neighborhoods and kick homeowners to the curb literally keep in mind we're talking about people who have paid their bills on time and with no oversight no accountability these hired thugs are smashing stealing and laughing all the way to the bank. stick around coming up we'll be speaking to alexis baden the mayor of the organic consumers association of all things monsanto.

wealthy british study done some time to explain the findings will target. markets why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report on our. we are focusing on the problem you know. because no one thought to drink no good school. moldovan no permits when you feel south park. other local what's not going up up is a while in the local needs you might want to community l.n.g.

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and the debate over genetic engineering rages on the u.s. government is once again pushing forward with the interests of corporate giants at the expense of consumer safety but this time the marriage between the two is being taken to another level see abject ag giants are no longer just pouring tens of thousands of dollars to line the pockets of politicians taking a cue from the n.s.a. it seems that monsanto is constructing a worldwide spying network to monitor dissent yes an article published in one of germany's largest newspapers containing a disturbing revelation the u.s. government in conjunction with monsanto tracking campaigners an independent scientists from around the world the article several websites that publish anti g.m.o. studies and research have been the target of several cyber attacks the article ledgers that an evaluation of ip addresses show that monsanto not only regularly tracks the pages of these sites but several government agencies do as well

including the u.s. army intelligence center so here to discuss this latest development and monsanto's war on truth i'm joined now by alexis baden mayer political director and they were going to consumers association haiti nice to have you on think that the tracking we have so i guess i'm not surprised at all that monsanto is tracking or looking at these websites that's in their interest but the army intelligence center i am very surprised why do you think the u.s. government is doing once. well it shocked me as well but months into collaborates with the u.s. government and every other aspect of policy and decision making we know through wiki leaks that the embassies have regularly worked with monsanto to push genetic engineering on countries whose public has already stated that they don't want these foods so you know why not collaborate with the military to spy on scientists talk a little bit more about the extensive kind of collusion going on between. the u.s. government when interesting and topical example is. he worked at crop life

america the lobbying arm for monsanto and the other big biotech and chemical and seed companies now he works for the obama administration after of course being a number one obama fundraiser so that he got appointed to the office of the u.s. trade representative and now he's in charge of negotiating trade deals with foreign countries that don't want monsanto's g.m.o. but he's pressing this line of the u.s. government that they have to take them on believe you know what michael taylor food safety is our former v.p. of monsanto you know the article also mentions that the chief agricultural negotiator for the t.p. is a former monsanto lobbyist i mean what does this reveal first of all about the t.v. i mean should we be worried about our safety here in this. we should be worried about every aspect of consumer safety when companies use governments to negotiate trade deals and the companies will get the governments to negotiate so much but the

scary part of the trade deals is that once these trade deals are finalized they include a provision known as investor state dispute resolution this allows companies to sue countries any time they feel like a regulation that protect public safety is hurting their bottom line and just to make clear what of course it was a choice i mean we're talking about. national sports overseen by corporate heads that could actually do a country if they do choose to label g.m. . labeling it as terrifying that is really terrifying it is a marvel and the countries that are part of the t p p peru they just had a ten year moratorium japan they label g.m. others and when there's a contamination event in the united states as we've recently had an oregon over a week they block imports from the u.s. so these are our targets monsanto and the government are both working to stop those

barriers to trade but you know it alexis it's ok because when santa along with du pont just launched this new website called g.m.o. answers dot com where they answer all of this in a lot of splenda do like this and they answer a lot of grievances they talk about how healthy g m o's are providing transparency of course the issue why do you think now i mean you know this web site are they really feeling the mounting pressure here for what is going to happen eventually in the united states will probably pass the labeling law and washington this year in november it'll be a ballot initiative and we expect it to pass that's the beginning of the end of this type of secrecy where consumers don't know what they're eating you know month santo democracy because democracy works against them the new york times just did a poll showing that ninety three percent of americans want to know what they're eating and whether it contains genetically modified organism also in the poll it showed that more than half of us would not be modified food if we did if we know so

clearly democracy doesn't work for months they have to use other means and they have to use tens of billions of dollars of propaganda campaigns this website prop thirty seven and thirty seven campaign i mean speaking of labeling laws i know connecticut just passed that labeling law with all these strange need to be passed also by three joining states and it needed twenty million people in the states restricted population what's going. i mean well you know just like under the trade deals a company can sue a government that's what states are worried about and they're worried that monsanto is going to sue them and a little state like connecticut you know they have a good democratic process they can give the people what they want but they're not sure that they can defend it in court so they put all of these contingencies on it to protect themselves the justice of the state of affairs in the state cannot pass legislation that its constituents want because of fear of a lawsuit from this dry and corporation or do i want to actually read. some of

what's on that web site jim all answers are coming to response one of them is one hundreds of studies hundreds of studies have been continue to demonstrate that most do not present any health risk. well the american medical association last summer weighed in on this topic and they made a demand for the u.s. government they said please engage in pre-market safety testing of these foods before you start feeding them to the american public the u.s. government has never required pre-market safety testing of g.m. us we've been eating this all these things under this big experiment that has no controls and is not producing a scientific study the scientific studies are completely missing so sure monsanto you know they did their own studies and they've gotten approval for various. crops and for food and to get it into the food supply but the studies are not meaningful and the f.d.a. does voluntary consultation they don't even really check the math on these

scientific studies and really i mean if nothing is legal then really how do we know how do we really study human population that's been since one thousand nine hundred two well look at the u.s. population and all of the health problems that we have infertility obesity chronic problems like. you know most people are suffering from some type of diet related disease you know it's just that correlate with the fifteen or more years that we've been eating. it does and once we get better science all of these things will become clear but there's enough science for me i mean you see the newspaper and you see these pictures of rats at the gigantic tumors and you read the study that says oh we've noticed kidney and liver damage that's enough for me. that is your imagine human populations for decades and really no point of reference of where these diseases are are coming from a let's talk about that recent scary development of the we never approved for commercial use found growing mysteriously in oregon how did that happen is that

something we should be concerned with that's the very reason that the world turned against g.m.o. when they were first proposed it's because once you let this genie out of the bottle it can't be put back you you have open pollinated crops and even to test plaque can contaminate and destroy an entire variety of corner or wheat or whatever it is the rice producers in this country really suffered because there is a pharmaceutical variety of rice that was being grown by a bear and it contaminated a top variety of u.s. rice that with. and was being grown for export that variety actually had to be recalled by the u.s. government. rice producers can't even grow this type of rice anymore because it became contaminated and it was with pharmaceutical crops that wasn't even approved it was just in the tests so i mean these things are terribly dangerous but if the terminators you know if they're testing out in an open field i'm not cross means i

mean what's going to happen then yeah it's the end of biodiversity that's why scientists for years have been telling us that these things are dangerous believe. a lot more talk about them going to what's going to be a logics have done more research with about thirty seconds well they're constantly you skating the situation it's the past aside you know it's killing that these and europe has figured out they've been. and the three major types of cotton i pads decide the united states is still think oh what could it possibly be that maybe we should hire be allergic to figure it out for his bio be a logics and then never talk about calling you up his order. design choice instead of ever coming on breaking down some of those conceptions appreciate it thank you i think. are you guys that'll do it for us here in d.c. tonight thanks for watching have a great night we'll see to break the set tomorrow. choose

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on a reporter's twitter. instagram. to be in the. breaking news from up to eleven pm moscow time the world bradley manning is found not guilty of aiding the enemy and lifting the lid on american military wrongdoings but he still faces lengthy jail time on a host of other charges the details ahead. israeli and palestinian diplomats speaks in washington to revive negotiations after years of failed peace efforts while in the palestinian city of hebron report from where the roots of the deadlock most keenly felt. this costs of a chinese slowdown cost a shot the.