coming up on our t.v. thought congress's approval ratings were low before think again new poll looks at how americans feel about their elected lawmakers and let's just say it's an all time low take a look at the numbers just ahead and part of a secretive trade deal known as the t p p has come into light week you said it was document showing how the trans-pacific partnership would affect the u.s. and other negotiating nations from medicine to internet freedom or on that coming up and there are growing calls for the guantanamo bay detention camp to be closed to president obama's promise to close the facility years ago hasn't been kept but what might a new debate brewing on capitol hill over the national defense authorization act mean forget about that later on today show.

it's wednesday november thirteenth four pm in washington d.c. i'm sam sax and you're watching our team and we begin with a nine percent approval rating now that's not toronto's crack smoking mayor rob ford's approval rating now that's the united states is congress' approval rating today according to a new gallup poll nine percent is the lowest rating ever recorded in gallup's thirty nine year history of asking americans if they approve of the way congress is handling its job and just two months ago in september it looked like congress was making a comeback its approval rating was ten points higher at nineteen percent still abysmally low but better than nine percent and then the government shutdown happened and americans watched as a congress specifically a right wing political faction in congress blew a twenty four billion dollar hole into the economy and cut g.d.p. growth by more than a half percent. that was the cause of the government shutdown and the deal brokered

to end it virtually guaranteed that will repeat this disaster again at the beginning of next year but this is the way things have been going all year you might remember back in april when congress' approval rating was a slightly higher fifteen percent they could even pass gun safety measures that have the support of more than ninety percent of americans a good bill that had the support of ninety percent of americans couldn't pass congress thanks to a filibuster in the senate and one of the reasons why that gun bill failed was that lawmakers were afraid it would lead to a national gun registry that the government would keep track of all gun owners and then a few months later everyone found out that the government is sort of keeping track of all gun owners well all americans in general when edward snowden began releasing documents exposing this is global and domestic spying operations and guess who is completely blindsided by the n.s.a. his activities congress and institution we're told is providing the necessary oversight to sum up how congress has handled these n.s.a. revelations here were two members of congress on one of the chief committees in

charge of oversight the house intel committee arguing over when the committee knew what about the n.s.a.'s program spying on world leaders and i'm interested to know the stream and we would be had does it take you down to the committee and spend a couple of hours going through mounds of product that would allow a member to be as informed as a member wishes to be on sources and methods and all activities of the intelligence community under the national intelligence framework i would just say and i just think this we need to be careful about what i've tried of i but i don't us to use the classification and i think would be disingenuous mr chairman if you're suggesting we have information if we don't have it it's congress's job to keep the intelligence community in check it's utterly failed at that job and that's not my opinion that's coming straight from another member of congress and self alan grayson. what we see from the conventional of from these congressional oversight

committees regarding our so-called intelligence community is not the they're performing oversight rather overlooking and systematically doing so i think that they become apologists for the spying industrial complex and that i have literally never seen them do anything other than rationalize these in some cases of gross abuses and constitutional violations particularly with regard to domestic surveillance the confluence of surveillance revelations inability to do something about gun violence and dysfunction in the budgeting process have highlighted inability of congress to do really anything which is reflected in these historically low approval ratings americans struggling to stay in their homes or pay their student loans or even just find a job have had to look elsewhere for help organizations like occupy debt are stepping up to address the needs of constituent americans and for now congress seems to be done legislating for the year closing out one of the most unproductive years in the history of lawmaking you know immigration reform no budget deal and

nothing what's worse there's still another year left in the hundred thirteenth congress and if things continue this way especially with an election looming then that nine percent number today might actually look pretty good come next november. ok staying on top of the hill lawmakers in the house may have just killed the trans-pacific partnership t p p a quick refresher refresher here the tepee is a new trade deal in the works that would open up markets between nations along the pacific rim like united states canada and japan but there are major concerns that the trade deal could hurt her to workers in the united states and infringe on online privacy and a free and open internet those concerns are only heightened by the high level of secrecy surrounding the t p p trade negotiations or even members of congress have complained they're being shut out of the process by more powerful transnational corporations spight all of that this trade deal was headed for a fast track approval in congress meaning it couldn't be filibustered and it

couldn't be amended this is basically the way congress has passed every trade deal over the last few decades but this time things may work differently one hundred seventy lawmakers in the house have signed on to a letter telling the obama administration that they will not grant fast track authority on the t p p a move that could effectively kill the trade deal altogether not only that some of the inner workings of the tepee have now been dragged out of the shadows and into the sunlight this morning wiki leaks leaked the actual text of the intellectual property chapter of the transpacific partnership ninety five page document revealing in great detail just where negotiations currently stand on a number of very important issues documents expose the united states is one of the primary drivers of a slew of new anti-consumer laws that could take effect all across the pacific joining me now to discuss more about these new developments in the tepee is peter may bar to the director of access to medicine at public citizen and james lowe director of knowledge ecology international gentlemen thank you so much for joining

me here james i want to start with you this really is one of the first times we've gotten such a glimpse into t.p. negotiations here they've been extremely secret member as it had members of congress have been privy to a lot of this stuff what do these documents released by wiki leaks state kind of show us. well it's remarkable that we have to depend on weaker leagues to find it with the hell's going on i mean the greenman is really about patents and copyrights primarily some some issues about trademarks these are not you would think big city state secrets but it's a battle it's really a. this chapter is really been driven by the lobbying by the pharmaceutical companies in hollywood and what you see in here is the united states table you know a whole slew of proposals that would benefit pharmaceutical companies and hollywood in the in the patent copyright area and that sort of thing and then and then you see the pushback from other countries and so you can you can see on any particular issue how the various members japan australia malaysia approved different countries

kind of kind of fall out on these examiners your ports the road up there's still a lot of negotiating to be done that the report showed that a lot of these provisions there's not agreement between the united states and other nations and that gives people who are seeing these documents an incredible opportunity to weigh in here well yeah and i mean the u.s. is talking like going to close the agreement now by the end of the year there's there's nine hundred brackets in the text i mean it you know they have a next meeting next week i mean this isn't the most recent version but it's but there's not a lot changed since this was written so i think it's it's hard to say what we don't know as politically what kind of deals are being made i think that the u.s. is going to trade. market access to the united states which will cost some people their jobs in the united states in return for these other countries and dorsey in some measure of anti-consumer provisions that will keep drug prices high and will expand the the rights of publishers at the expense of consumers. peter on this

issue of keeping drug prices high i don't think a lot of people understand. where of the patents that go into medicine and patenting surgical methods what are these documents show about how you know certain medicine as that. kryten the u.s. or surgical methods that are created in the us. aren't exactly going to be as available to other parts of the world that need them that's right well it's called trade agreement but really this is a secretive rule making against public health and it would lead to preventable suffering and death in asia and latin america while binding us consumers to high drug prices bad rules here at home there are a number of bad proposals that have been advanced by big pharma and as you mentioned includes incredibly patents on surgical methods on the methods that doctors are actually using on patients their treatment practices anything that's not what the doctors bare hands potentially patentable monopolised you this is some

doctor wasn't there way before i mean surgical methods used to be something that people could just use that could be patented there are only two countries in the world that recognize that recognize these patents one is the united states the other is australia which actually opposes the u.s. proposal in the text eighty countries have banned these procedures outright is an outrageous violation of medical ethics this move in the house to. kind of stand up against this fast track fast tracking of this trade deal is that really significant because we know it will if all these countries are coming together negotiate something and they're afraid that whatever they come out whatever they come up with that the u.s. is going to take it back to congress and congress is going to amend it in make all these changes to it they just might walk away from the table these other countries could this move to not fast i could actually kill the trade deal together think you have to have pressure on both sides it's an outrageous secretive process and this is going to significantly increase the pressure not only because gresh will move

but the fact that for the first time countries proposals are are exposed in the united states is visibly isolated it has clearly lost the debate and is simply trying to bully and pressure countries by hook or by crook into lining. up with big pharma hollywood anywhere the united states can get that agreement but it's really not looking very good for those proposals here james this this still gives enormous power to transnational corporations and it weakens the power and to some extent of sovereign governments to be able to pass laws that affect their own citizens and this comes out of this whole dispute resolution process and these kind of courts that are created in this deal can you explain more about the process by which corporations can sue governments over laws that help consumers i think that that's the most important thing that's going to take place this agreement that we most trade agreements or most people think of trade agreements as agreements between countries the world trade organization you can only have a dispute if

a country suzyn other country and that does happen but it doesn't happen with. huge amount of frequency partly because countries are kind of reluctant to do that and maybe they have if it's something about their intellectual property laws they may have something in their own country that they don't really you know want to fight over but if you extend the right to litigate these things to private companies as the t p p does in the investor state provisions. then you're asking really disney or fives or or monsanto if they want to challenge a provision in a country's law and they really have nothing to lose and they will they will then push the awful open they really push these things so right now you've gone from a situation for a lot of these professions where they could maybe test it or they could try to get a government to test it and now they can try the w t o if it doesn't work they can try to have a government raise it in the tepee this regional trade agreement and if that doesn't work they can just bring an action themselves and if they cut and if

a company wins against against the government you can have massive fines that the country has to pay to the private investors just for doing something it's designed to protect consumers you know there is this is one chapter of the agreement there are twenty nine there are twenty eight chapters left shrouded in secrecy if if this one chapter does so much one of the other twenty chapters you that's a frightening that's a frightening point in this comes amid a time where people are afraid of u.n. one world governments and stuff with all these treaties this seems like one world government here the straight out of we're out of time here five seconds quick going to point out yeah i mean it it should not be secret the only reason i think it is secret is because there is no one in the white house and there's no one in the congress this willing to say that it should be public other than maybe elizabeth warren and ron wyden and it's been a very little congressional support for this as peter maybe director of access to medicine and public citizen and james love director of knowledge ecology international thank you both. now on to afghanistan more than twelve years after

the u.s. went to war in that country the situation is still very messy as american taxpayers spend enormous amounts of money paying contractors to rebuild the country a new report by the special inspector general for afghanistan reconstruction shows that some of that money is flowing in the hands of those who wish to do harm to americans artie's perry and boring has more. u.s. taxpayer money that's supposed to go towards helping rebuild afghanistan and combat terrorism and actually ending up in the hands of terrorists themselves as according to a new report by the special inspector general for afghanistan reconstruction or see who are the military watchdog found that the u.s. has awarded more than one hundred fifty million dollars to companies that are accused of financing terrorist groups they were warned however in april this year the same watchdog group released a report titled contract contracting with the enemy and say the challenges and contracting in afghanistan include an environment of insecurity and corruption that increases the risk of us funds being misused to finance terrorists or insurgent

groups the special inspector general recommended the department of defense remove forty three companies that they found to have ties with terrorist networks from its list of military contractors these companies have been flagged by the d.o.d. for a while and have yet to be removed and this wasn't the first call of action back in december two thousand and twelve a group of bipartisan senators sent a letter to the u.s. army expressing concern over a backlog of cases at the army suspension and debarment office while were for as are supposed to be completed in thirty days the special inspector general found the average processing time was three hundred twenty three days a senator's letter is asked of the department of defense pay special attention to the forty three contracts a c. are flagged to be involved with individuals or companies with links to terrorist groups such as the economy network and. this is how senator jeanne shaheen a member of the armed services and foreign relations committee described the situation to diane sawyer of a.b.c. news that's like the united states government subsidizing. the taliban and

al qaeda have cannae network those groups that are trying to shoot and kill our soldiers you may remember the high conny network as the group that the us blamed for the september two thousand and eleven attack on the us embassy in war that killed sixteen people one of the companies is a private road construction firm that the u.s. says is partially owned by a leader of the high conny network the name of that company is considered classified information and has not been released to the public but according to reports from the pentagon and the commerce department the company is directing approximately one to two million dollars per month and u.s. taxpayer funds to the high county network but that company denies these links and because the company's ties to terrorists were discovered there were classified reports it would be considered a violation of due process at the company you can see the evidence against them so they remain on the list and this case is not

a government bureaucracy and red tape as some would suspect it shows the complications that occur when you apply an american principle like due process on a global level and the pentagon is not answering questions about this issue at this time in washington d.c. perry and boring are to you earlier on on this day in two thousand and one president george w. bush signed an executive order giving him the power to detain suspected terrorists and to try them in military commissions and this order paved the way for the prison facility at guantanamo bay is now open for nearly twelve years despite presidential promises high profile hunger strikes and growing discontent around the world the prison is still open and there are doubts if it will ever close or to have a stasi churkin to deliver sir final report on what's really going on inside. when it comes to this prison the numbers speak for themselves since being set up

after the attacks of nine eleven a total of seven hundred seventy nine hundred have been held at guantanamo today one hundred sixty four people remain over half of them have been long cleared for release but remain locked up a total of six people is currently under trial alleged prisoners of war brought here since two thousand and two removed from the battlefield of america's ever expanding war on terror it's both the policy of the u.s. not to hold anyone longer than necessary but we also know that whenever we release someone we assume a writ over a period of more than a decade the majority of detainees held here have been set free if the men of guantanamo are really these superhuman monsters you know the worst of the worst quote dick cheney. they would have been released. most of those still kept locked up have not been charged and are being held indefinitely what sort of a black hole of a limbo a weak system where the president of the united states simply refuses to say the innocent but u.s.

officials say the law of war brings behind this barbed wire the idea is that in a war when you capture folks you as the capturing authority are permitted to hold people during the duration of hostilities. when hostilities and or if there's no longer any purpose legitimate purpose to to hold them then they must be released a tiny problem the war on terror has no geographic borders with men once held here repeat treated to a wide array of countries. who are only specific to guantanamo you can't even you couldn't even the case on the u.s. mainland because it would be unconstitutional and illegal the war on terror also has no end in sight and national security is a popular excuse to simply ignore the law. the rhetoric really isn't about national security or prisoners being so dangerous that they can't possibly be released that can't be true after being locked up the legal process if any moves at

a glacial pace in two thousand and twelve five detainees were transferred to had completed their military commission sentence two were court ordered released. detainees have been repatriated and one was a suicide over the years countless detainee claims of mistreatment and abuse dozens of suicide attempts mass hunger strikes lost patience and hope just this year the majority of the prison population refused to eat for six months straight only to be force fed the. mandate that we have is being able to provide adequate nutrition to preserve life washington has appointed a new envoy to close a camp that is a dark spot on america's image this comes after a mass hunger strike that returned the world's attention to the place that some have dubbed the gulag of our times even if close to it seems. to mean a state and us history forever it's very easy to end one ton of. you release the

men that you're not prosecuting right and as you said only six men are being prosecuted right now the military prosecutor has made clear that he intends to prosecute a few more but he's also made clear that it won't be more than a few more barack obama promised to close the notorious facility on day one of his presidency he's now in his second term it's only a president can do it and the idea that it's you know that it's congress's fault is just not correct it is the president the top holding these men in detention some president has to come in and this. it's hard to tell right now exactly how long we'll be down here doing this mission her. or her. one ton a movie cuba. in on a saucy attorney joins me now from our studios in new york and here in washington

d.c. i'm joined by someone also very familiar with what's going on at guantanamo colonel morris davis former chief prosecutor. i want to start with you how closely are those who work at the prison and are involved in the legal process there or even detained there how closely are they following this debate stateside following the promises the president has made in the recent moves he's made toward closing the facility and what do they make of it all well you know i you know our sam curiously oftentimes when we spoke with officials at get mo it sounded a little bit like they're not really paying too close attention in terms of when this facility is going to be shut down many of the personnel employed there you know it's just another deployment for them for many of them a very kind of proud location to work at and because there's been so much back and forth coming from the white house in terms of what exactly to do with these detainees it seems like many of the officials on the ground at least have stopped kind of paying attention and they just don't know and they're just waiting to hear what's going to happen in terms of the detainees we certainly having spoken to

countless lawyers know that they follow certainly very closely what's going to happen to them because of these indefinite conditions they're being held in for one we know they we've been told that they watch our t.v. as one of their news sources so you know certainly the detainees are watching everything closely in terms of officials not so much. when you are there is a kind of a bubble there are people aware of the kind of coverage that guantanamo gets around the world and the kind of debate that's going on in the united states about it they do i think they're very conscious of it that you have to go back to the beginning. recall this was not a mission the military ever wanted this was a decision made by political appointees in the bush administration to try to avoid the law and the uniformed judge advocate general all opposed so this is not a mission the military wanted twelve years ago and i don't think they still want to today i remember you told me that last time we talked about this that you guys kind of went along with it trusting that you would make that this would be looked at

later kind of like the nuremberg trials were looked at but we know now it didn't work out what you were in every process the military justice system there what are the flaws in it why has it not been able to do what ideally it should be doing well you know the process that started under president bush twelve years ago today signed the order that authorized military commissions and then in two thousand and six the u.s. supreme court said it was a lawful order that it was unconstitutional violating the geneva conventions and shut it down congress passed the military commissions act of two thousand and six then in two thousand and nine president obama got another military commissions act so we've tried and tried and tried and failed and even attorney general holder said last week in hindsight they should have prosecuted police checked muhammad in the others in federal court back in two thousand and nine so that was the right decision then it's still the right decision now and just pet you wait you know this twelve years of failure at guantanamo just continues to undermine america's

reputation and you said the civilian trials i mean there's been fewer than seven i think actual military commissions or that have been attempted meanwhile there's been how many civilian trials i don't it's in the seven military commissions they were all convicted of providing material support for terrorism which the court of appeals here in washington said is not a legitimate law for offense so we convicted seven people of a crime this is not a crime on a stars here is the fear what's alternately keeping the prison open i saw in the report captain robert duran noted that anytime someone is released quote we assume a risk that suggests fear is the motive motivating factor here and just how founded is this fear that people who are released will come back and strike america. well like you know this this is the problem of releasing the detainees that we've heard a lot on the ground was that this particular concern that they're going to return to committing certain acts of terrorism and being back to being involved in the war on terror and the numbers that u.s.

officials are citing are at over twenty five percent which seems at least to me personally a little bit excessive because of all of these people that were detained if they ended up being released and not charged and not seen as dangerous why is it that these huge numbers returned to the battlefield according to u.s. officials why release them in the first place and why hold them there for so long without really investigating these personalities of that's what this prison is there for i think that's a pretty big question but in terms of the fear you know it's a very popular concern that even the existence of this president self just ends up fueling more anti-american sentiment so certainly it's just like a vicious circle and i don't think many people these days consider. to be a cure of anything at this point colonel davis there's two events on the rise near there's a new national defense authorization act that's going to be debated on at the end of this year there's usually that's usually been used to deal with quantum zero and at the end of bird sometime next year the war in afghanistan is supposedly going to

course that was passed with the authorization for use of military force which underpins guantanamo when the war in afghanistan ends does the a u m f go away and what does that do to guantanamo well it does i mean that spend kind of debated argument on whether that was a legitimate justification this law of war you can detain the enemy notion but certainly even that notion twenty fourteen so there's about thirteen months for the u.s. government to figure out what we're going to do with these guys can they make up a new legal fiction to justify keeping them where they do the right thing and begin repatriating the ones that need to go home and prosecuting the ones that need to be prosecuted but it passed in the past the same. and armed services committee gives the president more authority so i'm hoping that the senate will pass that when it comes up next where there's that waiver national security waiver that the president still hasn't used and he will be able to use it again we'll see what happens on a saucer target in new york and colonel morris davis former chief prosecutor of demo here in d.c.

thank you both and that does it for now i'm sam sax stay tuned boom bust is next so. there's a danger of the israelis can convince at least some people in the international community that it is serious about an attack and i really do believe that obama and the people in charge you know don't want to get another conflict going in the middle east considering what we've gone through with iraq and afghanistan and natural france is sufficiently convincing as you agree in part in a such a one issue back to made not have been too in the past but it's true now as we mentioned as being as clear decent to do to zation between germany and great britain at least doing the geneva talks and of course you have to have also other ninety tons would not on the same track as the french.

please please. please very hard to take. that back with that her right there. please. please. please please. please. please please please please. please. please.

there i marinate this is boom bust and these are the stories we're tracking for you today first up if all you want for christmas is to be debt free men look into occupies dead you believe you will tell you all about it coming right up and it's musical chairs over at the c.s. to see once again so who's comin who's going well so you ran and finally james gall birth sat down with one off in studio to discuss debt ceiling debt crisis and the deficit of knowledge in congress you won't want to miss that it's coming right up but now let's get to the show.