coming up on our t.v. army whistleblower bradley manning was sentenced to thirty five years in prison the judge handed down the sentence of the man who leaked government data to wiki leaks an update on the case ahead from fort meade and a series of new revelation show two sides of the n.s.a. on one hand the n.s.a. doesn't know what edward snowden fully has on its surveillance on the other it's reported that seventy five percent of u.s. internet traffic is being monitored more on these developments coming up and egypt remains in a state of chaos after the government crackdown on morsy supporters while the former egyptian leader hosni mubarak may soon be released from custody more on the crisis later in the show.

it's wednesday august twenty first four pm in washington d.c. i'm sam sax and you're watching r.t. and we begin with a prison sentence of thirty five years that's what a military judge handed down to bradley manning this morning as punishment for releasing hundreds of thousands of state department cables war logs and other dog government documents including what's now known as the collateral murder video last month many was found guilty of twenty of twenty two charges including espionage charges he was facing a maximum maximum of ninety years in prison the government asked for manning to serve at least sixty years meanwhile his defense push for a sentence that would still allow manning to enjoy somewhat of a life in the end judge colonel denise lynn settled on thirty five years a dentist dishonorable discharge from the army and loss of pay and benefits manning sentence reduced was. by one thousand one hundred eighty two days for the time he

was in prison before the trial and another one hundred twelve days because of harsh treatment after his arrest in two thousand and ten manning's attorney david coombs said this in reaction to the sentencing while we were successful in avoiding the aiding the enemy offense the fact that the government pursued this offense the fact that the government. let this offense go forward even after it was clear there was no evidence of any intent to do so should sound an alarm to every journalist it should sound an alarm to every concerned citizen marti's liz wall was in the fort meade courtroom earlier today i first asked her about the courtroom as a reaction when the verdict was read. i was sitting in the courtroom when the judge delivered the verdict today and when the judge announced that sentence of thirty five years while what i heard from my perspective i heard us some gas and despite

repeated warnings from the judge and and military officers for members and spectators to not make any comment to not shout anything out they made their ruling very clear that there could be punishment we heard members spectators. say things like bradley your our hero thank you thank you bradley so it was a packed courtroom plenty of his supporters there that made their their support for manning clear in the courtroom after that sentence was delivered pam was you've been covering this from the get go order when you measure of the sentence itself i mean the governor was asking for something like sixty years could a face of nineteen years he ends up getting thirty five years. with the sentence i mean i think it depends on who you ask and whether or not it was lenient or whether or not it was too strict as you said it was possible it was

possible he space ninety years the prosecution in the sentencing arguments asked for sixty and the defense didn't ask for any particular number of years but they kind of hinted that by the time a lot of the information becomes declassified that bradley manning leaked they you should not still be rotting and a jail cell also the charges that he ceded this guilty to amounted to twenty years alone just for those charges so so some people say that this could be kind of a happy medium. so to speak i will say though that during the press conference today that combs just spoke at bradley manning's attorney david whom he was asked is this a fair trial did bradley manning have a fair trial and what who said he said. he said it to comment on whether or not it was perceived or it can be perceived as a fair trial he said no and he said that is because the lack of transparency

throughout this trial there hasn't been any cameras allowed inside he said if you could have cameras in that courtroom a lot of what happened would not have happened according to him today just moments ago lou so what happens next we've had the trial in a guilty verdict now the sentencing is there anything else. well coom today here when he came out and address the spectators and something making made clear before the sentence and now after the sentence at this press conference is that this is not the end they base the at his supporters yet another chapter actually another kind of beginning there's going to be a whole nother post trial process he said that next week he is going to file or a request in the next week next week to file a request that president obama pardon bradley manning or at least commute his sentence to time served as you know he served over three years and been

a in confinement for over three years just in this. throughout the trial and pretrial and when there's a whole process there is then. the case is going to go to the army court of appeals and it's possible that it could go now all the way to the supreme court. argy correspondent liz wahl thank you. now for more on what the sentence means for bradley manning and other whistleblowers moving forward i'm joined here in d.c. by just one radek the national security and human rights director of the government accountability project and colonel morris davis a professor of law at howard university and the former chief prosecutor on time obey thank you both for coming on colonel davis i want to start with you thirty five year prison sentence handed down what exactly does that mean well i know a lot. folks really panicked when they heard that number today in the military has a very elaborate process for how they calculate confinement so that thirty five year number likely results and private manning serving about another eight to nine

years of confinement because he will get credit for time served you get called good time credit it's a third off ten days per month off your sentence and then he's eligible for parole in a round the one third point so he's probably looking at about eight or nine more years to be a total of about eleven or twelve year sentence for what he did just like this was really the critical phase of the trial i mean many had accepted first some of these charges the only question was how long would he be sentenced prison for and whether or not already serving three years of being tortured was enough punishment as is liz well he just we just heard from interviewed some people at the coroner here's a clip you're talking to dr cornel west and here's what he had to say but i just think it's a sad day in the country when a fellow citizen my did one of the bradley manning reveals lies in crimes of the u.s. government he's the one who's criminalize and for me one day is too much. so one

day being too much do you share that sentiment or is there something to be said about kind of facing some of the consequences for this and has already i guess is that i think he already has i mean if i had my druthers i would limit it to time served which of course included nine months in solitary which even the judge found to be torture or unlawful pretrial confinement. but realistically given that the government was seeking ninety and then sixty and the defense was around twenty five thirty five seems like a good a good outcome though obviously it's a very steep compared to any other whistleblower on espionage charges then it goes from thirty five down to possibly eight as you said colonel davis but even just saying thirty five years or even eight years implies that manning is still somewhat of a dangerous individual which can't really be the case i mean the guy leaked secrets

it's not like. he's going to be given security clearance over the next few years and be able to do this again so isn't this really about sending a message this verdict not so much really dealing with a crime but it's making sure people in the future don't don't know what you know the government had the opportunity when private manning pled guilty to improperly disclosing classified information and he stood up and took accountability for what he did wrong which subjected him to a twenty year sentence and the government rather than just accepting his guilty plea and what would have been an appropriate punishment insisted on going forward with the aiding the enemy charge similar to treason and the government lost on that and all they've done is bought five years of appeals from here on out and i think private manning has some really good grounds for appeal but it again is to send a message to the next person sitting out there and i haven't heard anyone of the military saying gee i wish i was private manning i think folks that have seen what he's been through don't want to be the next private manning and they're going to think twice about revealing classified information i think that message has been heard and you know i know the prosecution. very unabashedly about the fact that

they were seeking sixty years in order to send a message to me that it's all about politics and has nothing to do with justice in terms of whether it's been heard at least in my office where we represent whistleblowers it has not stemmed the flow of people coming forward and i think edward snowden is a good example of someone who found the manning case and all of these espionage act prosecutions to be instructive in terms of how the u.s. would engage in overkill and try to seek blood from a turn up in a way that it could so i don't think it will be a deterrent of other whistleblowers jumping off from from mr snowden does this kind of confirm a lot of his suspicions about facing facing trial in the united states here and basically how difficult it is nowadays to mount a whistle blowing defense case really whistleblowing is not a defense in a criminal case it's not it doesn't provide an affirmative defense and all of the

courts that i've heard these espionage charges against whistleblowers first of all none of them have been sustained in that great case they were all dismissed kiriakou all the espionage charges failed manning is the only case where it succeeded but again that was in a court martial context a significant portion of which was conducted in secret and which the public had no access to colonel dave so we've had a series of kind of bombshell civilian court cases recently that have shown that it's very hard to prove guilt george zimmerman coming to mind here in this case this was a military court how does that change the burden of proof how does it make the defense's job a lot more difficult i don't know that only it doesn't change it although the standard is still proof beyond a reasonable doubt and i think a lot of the attorneys that have been involved with the guantanamo cases will tell you that they gained a lot of respect for the military justice system as a result of that but you know the system is has gotten a black eye because of our mishandling of the sexual assault cases and says by

happenstance you had the man. case today you've got to saw major hasan at fort hood you have sergeant bales' fort lewis and you've got to lead shaikh muhammad in kordic one tonn m o so there's no real spotlight on the military justice system right now and i think today was a positive step that hopefully can help redeem some of the luster that the system does and you mention that there might be some appeal opportunities mean for to the other option for manning is to get a presidential pardon from president obama would speak worked about it is that is that is that just i think it will be a cold day in hell for that to happen i mean obama just finished prosecuting a way you know he was the one who approved we here proved and same with all the other espionage act prosecutions of whistleblowers so i don't think he would suddenly have an epiphany or a moment of truth that this is not a wise path in democratic society that's supposed to be transparent leslie it's important or many did try to reach out to the new york times with this information other news outlets have the new york times been on this in taken some of this

information would we be here talking about about this trial would manning a face these sort of consequences were i mean what does that say about journalism in general the whole wiki leaks angle in julian assange engine things i think if he i think the new york times that sounds like they blew him off i mean he did reach out to the new york times and no one responded given the new york times coverage of this trial a spin abysmal all they haven't shown up during much of it i'm in terms of whether they would cover it i don't know i don't know if they would have covered his disclosures i'm not sure what they would have done with that but in general there is a war on whistleblowers and a war on journalism and in general a crackdown on information if it happens to embarrass the government or even worse expose its crime colonel morris davis professor of law at howard university just erratic national security human rights director at the government accountability project thank you both sam. now moving on to the n.s.a.

and it's been rough. two and a half months since edward snowden's leaks were exposed to the world and the national security agency's mass surveillance operations unveiled and yet to this day the n.s.a. still is unsure of the extent of these leaks unnamed sources within the intelligence community told n.b.c. news that the n.s.a. is quote overwhelmed trying to figure out exactly what edward snowden took and i say chief keith alexander was asked back in july about just how much the agency knows regarding the extent of the leaks here's what he said let me ask you about edward snowden i realize you can't tell us what he got but do you feel now that you know what he yes. now this latest report contradicts that claim and this a spokesperson said that alexander answered the question quote in a more general sense or i guess the least untruthful response meanwhile more news is breaking about the scope of the n.s.a. surveillance of the internet particularly u.s.

networks more unnamed government and intelligence officials told the wall street journal that the n.s.a. has the ability to monitor seventy five percent of all the domestic internet traffic here in the united states it does this through a series of relationships with internet providers that at the request of the n.s.a. hand over various streams of traffic to be further reviewed using complex and essay algorithms now how these requests are handled differs between each internet provider with some internet providers employing their own legal team to determine which data should be handed over to the n.s.a. and which data should it and often the way these requests are handled has caused friction that's a quote has caused friction between internet providers and the n.s.a. and definitions of what exactly is a foreign communication to be handed over to the n.s.a. is still being worked out but as officials say americans e-mails content american e-mail content and metadata is inevitably being swept up into the n.s.a.'s vast

data bases in fact in one instance documented by the wall street journal's report all e-mail and text communications around the area of salt lake city utah were monitored by the n.s.a. and the f.b.i. for a period of six months ahead of the two thousand and two winter olympics and just this afternoon the a.p. reports based on newly classified documents that the n.s.a. collected as many as fifty six thousand e-mails every year for three years belonging to americans with no connection to terrorism before the top secret files a court stepped in and ordered the n.s.a. to change its collection methods so that's that joining me now for more i'm joined by shay on. all the senior attorney yet center for constitutional rights in new york and brian do get technologist and open technology institute here in d.c. welcome to you both thanks so much for coming on thank you brian what do you make of this claim that the government isn't fully aware of the extent of snowden's

leaks how can they not know what sort of info is taken off these networks well first it's incredibly disturbing that the that they actually don't know what was taken that know right that no audit trail was was created. the that's the type of abrogation of trust that the united states government needs to restore and that is why the president the united states needs to an in-state and independent x. sternal council of experts to review the n.s.a. . the n.s.a. spying but on all these systems that edward snowden was using they by default should be creating audit trails of every single action of every single administrator on the machine edward snowden was not the top level administrator of this machine he just happened to have access across domains at a top secret security level there is no excuse for any administrator to not keep

logs of that type of information and it is a entirely entirely disturbing and untrustworthy of the n.s.a. to not keep track of that type of information right i guess yeah i guess you could say that way or that they're either being a little less than truthful as we've seen or that's just gross incompetence that they can't seem to track what's going on on their network share on a given the way that both the u.s. and u.k. governments have reacted to these leaks most recently detaining glenn greenwald's partner david miranda in the u.k. doesn't that show that it likely doesn't know the extent. well you know only if you believe that david miranda was actually carrying some of the documents it seems very implausible to me that would have sent any twenty nine year old who didn't speak very much english and wasn't a lawyer with a whole trove of valuable kind of you know classified documents or draft copies of stories or things like that i think this was clearly an attempt to just intimidate

greenwald and any other journalists like him who is thinking about reporting on on stories that involve classified information that the government doesn't want out there you know cardinal richelieu i think said that a man with a family can be made to do anything and this is probably about the most intimidating thing you could do to a journalist to the us it has the ability to collect seventy five percent of internet officials say it's inevitable that americans communications are getting swept up into these databases at what point does the administration just have to flat out concede that yes it is indeed collecting vast quantities of data on american citizens and that it indeed has a defacto domestic spying operation right you know that's something they'll never concede because you know a lot of people in the media believe that the american public's very blahs they about surveillance it's true that all the polling data for the last seven years shows that the american public doesn't care if the surveillance seems like it's targeted at terrorists and if it seems like it's targeted at foreigners and but they do care greatly even if they think it's a very thin surveillance it's directed at every american or ordinary americans

right and so you see all the administration's talking points are aimed at saying we're not actually listening to domestic content we're only gathering your phone numbers right or we're targeting terrorists or we're only targeting foreigners and the interesting thing about the last two weeks of stories is it shows that the n.s.a. is actually not particularly good at limiting itself to targeting foreigners if that's even what they're trying to do right there was just half an hour ago three opinions declassified from the fisa court the secret court that monitors some of this surveillance where they said and i'll quote they were repeated inaccurate statements about the targeting and use criteria and that these were inconsistent with the spirit of the statute that the n.s.a.'s actions. you're right so i think you know it shows that when the courts get information from the n.s.a. that's accurate they can actually serve as a real check but that the n.s.a. is not doing a very good job of limiting itself to surveillance of foreigners brian what are we supposed to make of this claim that seventy five percent of the internet is being monitored why not one hundred percent given the n.s.a. zele where we're where is that twenty five percent coming from it's in the rest of

the world and it's and i as pieces that for whatever reason the n.s.a. has not managed to touch yet or it's in service providers that encrypt traffic between to themselves and the user that the n.s.a. has also not managed to tap in i think that raises an interesting question is that if the n.s.a. is relying so heavily on these internet providers to hand over that first stream of data that they ask for could that be a potential pressure point for people who are outraged about this to target these internet providing companies and say look we're not going to do business with you i mean i guess we've seen organizations like lava bit choose to shut down rather than hand over this sort of information could that be where efforts against the n.s.a. should be focused that's that's one area in the the end their efforts that are attempting to provide alternatives to massive to the worldwide internet if you check out a site called prism break dot org that's prism dash break dot org you'll find a host of applications tools that users can use to try to protect themselves

against n.s.a. surveillance one of those is a class of technology called mesh technology mesh wireless technology that is the technology allows communities people people to generate their own networks that are entirely separate from the internet but at the end of the day you have to trust someone and we should demand trust from the from the organizations that we need to communicate interesting that was shown a cardiologist senior attorney at the center for constitutional rights in brian doogan technologist had open technology institute. and of course all of the information we currently have about the national security agency's surveillance programs would still be in the government's computer networks were not for edward snowden artie's larry king spoke with former congressman and influential libertarian leader ron paul about whistleblowers in their role in bringing government secrets to what. the head of a wiki leaks julian assads recently described himself as a big admirer of yours what do you think of that whole we gave leeds operation the

leaking names and the like what was your reaction well i want as much transparency of government as possible i think wiki leaks has worked very hard to make sure this nobody's been injured and there's no evidence that anybody has but if our government is doing something wrong and they're hiding it from a us i think there is a moral obligation of those people who know and can reveal that to us to let us know they should tell us but they government complains oh no they're going to release this information to the enemy well i'm not the enemy the people is not the enemy the people ought to know what's going on we ought to have our privacy is protected and the secrecy of government challenge when it's totally unnecessary and most of this is very unnecessary all the spying that they do so what do you think of the of the bradley manning news and the edward snowden's. why i think ali all of them i think i think of them like daniel ellsberg daniel ellsberg you know was they

tried to put him away for a long time in prison they tried the you the new york times for it for releasing the truth about how the vietnam war was started how we were lied into that war and i think people now who are people now are trying to tell us the truth about what happened in iraq and afghanistan they should be seen more as heroes because you take a guy like snowden he knows exactly what he was up to and he knows the you know the danger of it and but he believed i sincerely believe although i've never met him that he was convinced that he was doing a service to the people by doing this and we should be calling people like this a traitor you can watch that full interview this thursday at nine pm eastern standard time right here on our t.v. . they're on to egypt where fallout from the military government's violent

crackdown on morsy supporters is rippling across the european union that crackdown has claimed the lives of more than nine hundred people in the last week as a result today e.u. member states agreed to suspend exporting any licenses for weapons that could be used against the egyptian people you did promise however to continue he made a tarion aid to the country citing the need to quote support vulnerable people in egypt meanwhile the release of former egyptian president hosni mubarak could be imminent as in egypt in court ruled today that the prosecution has exhausted its appeals to keep mubarak behind bars as for the other former egyptian president mohamed morsi he remains under house arrest and he was recently joined by the most senior leader of the muslim brotherhood mohamed badia who was arrested in cairo this week r.t.l. true has the latest from egypt. this is actually a legal decision grounded on proper law even though it seems quite ironic that two

and a half years after this revelation people are calling for a. house to wanted him to be in jail he could be seen walking on the streets in the next forty eight hours basically hosni mubarak has been in detention in prison now for the next month the time someone can be detained without charge now because we're seeing a retrial that means essentially the clock is being turned right back to two thousand and eleven before he started any of these trials so it's almost like he'd never been sentenced in the first place because he's already been in detention for several he is now can't keep them in the book he's actually sentenced now he has been in jail obviously because they've been other charges against him you had charges in regards to to corruption now that he's been acquitted if they're used there's no reason to keep him in jail however he still have forty eight hours max for the prosecutor to basically appeal the decision to release him if they decide that he should be released and he will remain in jail almost see you know how long they'll keep him as the trial goes forward it's the reaction on the streets is being wrought largely makes people here are kind of reeling from the situation in

the last few days been basically in the bloodiest weeks in egyptian modern history in the fighting between mostly supposes and security forces who will buy that the fun of hosni mubarak could be free to the same time is almost too much for some revolutionaries here who's speaking to me have told me that what was the point of coming out the streets two years ago what has been the point of fighting for justice and freedom and bread in the last two and a half years is the very person they started by to get is to be walking free we will see what happens as his trial is start to restart again on the twenty fifth of august at the same time as many other leading muslim brotherhood figures will also stand trial somewhat ironic that these two think is it because it basically to be facing trial at the same time but largely on the streets people are pretty upset that this much hated figure could be seen to be walking home in twenty four hours. there was true reporting from cairo and that does it for now for more of the stories we covered go to youtube dot com forward slash our to america to check out our website r.t.

dot com for slash usa you can follow me on twitter at same sex we'll see you later . the what defines a country's success led faceless figures of economic growth. for a standard of living led. us now has a new alert animation scripts scare me

a little. there is breaking news tonight and we are continuing to follow the breaking news the lead alexander's family cry tears of joy at a great thing that had theatrical red headed for a wall. is a story made sort of movies playing out in real life. and

it's time for what's in your prime interest i'm perry and boring that i am bob english let's get sued today's headline. eric holder the u.s. attorney general is cracking down on wall street well according to himself and wait he said anybody inflicting damage on our financial markets should not think they're out of the woods well there is a small problem with something called the statute of limitations and it's run out on a substantial number of criminal acts committed both before and after the last financial crisis unfortunately it seems the only people being prosecuted these days are mid-level employees and hedge funds and that would be for insider trading and while it's certainly a crime insider trading did not cause the last financial crisis nor will it cause a future one i discussed this in.