this banking sink state just. coming up on r t a white house of pointed review board made its way to capitol hill to make a case for n.s.a. surveillance changes but will want makers and the white house agree on any needing full reforms we'll have a report from capitol hill just ahead and in some parts of west virginia it's now safe to drink the tap water but not everyone can drink from the fountain after last week's chemical spill was a state judge has a warning for the company responsible for the leak details coming up. and an undercover drug deal exposed the d.a. and justice department secretly met with members of a mexican drug cartel all mexican authorities were left in the dark find out how the u.s. was doing the cartels dirty work later in the show. is

choose a january fourteenth five pm in washington d.c. i mean you're a david and you're watching our t.v. . we are now just three days away from a speech president obama is expected to give regarding the changes he's willing to make to satisfy concerns over the n.s.a. surveillance programs one of the most important questions to be addressed is whether the government will continue to collect millions of americans phone records in order to identify anyone it believes might be connected to terrorism but beyond the question of whether the program can continue is who would be responsible for storing the data one suggestion that's been proposed to the president is shifting the storage of the phone records from the n.s.a. to the phone companies themselves that's exactly what was explored today by obama's review group on intelligence and communications technologies and a special senate judiciary hearing former obama administration officials met to

talk about this and other possible n.s.a. reforms are too political commentator sam sachs is on the hill and brings us more. the senate judiciary committee took on n.s.a. reforms today and they heard from president obama's own independent n.s.a. review panel which recently put out forty six recommendations to reform the spy agency some ideas include adding more transparency to the n.s.a.'s requests for data from private companies changing the n.s.a.'s leadership structure and making changes to the top secret faiza court a lot of these reforms will require congressional action and stays hearing and on friday the president will lay out which reforms he supports but the most significant question today and the rest of the week is what happens to the n.s.a.'s bulk phone metadata collection program which has been ruled likely unconstitutional by one federal court but up held by another federal court the review panel discussed the privacy concerns associated with bulk metadata collection there is quite

a bit of content and metadata and when you have the records of the phone calls that a particular individual made on me you can learn an awful lot about that person the independent review panel also found no evidence that such bulk collection prevented any terrorist attacks but they don't suggest completely scrapping it instead they suggest stripping the n.s.a. of its power to collect and store americans metadata and instead leaving up to telecom companies to administer these massive databases that's an idea the white house reportedly may get behind the one that telecom companies are hesitant to endorse as is raising member of the senate judiciary committee senator chuck grassley this is an interesting idea perhaps worth investigating but i think it's legitimate to have concern that it may create some many as many privacy problems says it sells they indeed private companies seem to be allowing their customers information to be act on what seems to be

a daily basis now the chairman of the senate judiciary committee senator patrick leahy has his own ideas about the n.s.a.'s bulk collection america of. phone metadata he thinks the program should be terminated and he's sponsoring legislation to do just that but he's facing some strong opposition from lawmakers on the hill cozy with the surveillance state looking ahead the president could on his own end of the bulk phone records collection program he could do it this week and he doesn't need congress's approval but he's not expected to do that you might remember following the edward snowden revelations the white house moved to rather quickly to stop targeted spying on a few dozen world leaders but it has not shown the same willingness to stop dragnet spying on tens of millions of ordinary citizens in the usa and in places like germany and brazil so we'll have to hear if the white house is reconsidering its position on friday also don't forget about the courts the courts don't care what the white house or congress is doing and they're going to have their say on the

constitutionality of the n.s.a.'s bulk collection spying program too and it will likely be the final say. on capitol hill in washington d.c. sam sachs r t. and we're now learning that the u.s. made efforts to oust afghan president hamid karzai by attempting to manipulate the country's election in two thousand and nine this is all according to the headline making book by former defense secretary robert gates in the book called duty memoirs of a secretary at war gates called this attempt to influence afghan elections ugly he said quote it was all ugly our partner the president of afghanistan was tainted and our hands were dirty as well our future dealings with karzai always hugely problematic and his criticisms of us are at least more understandable in the context of our clumsy and failed pooch karzai has long claimed us trying to manipulate the two thousand and nine election to remove him from power and response to the allegations one karzai spokesman said that this confirms that their

suspicion is true karzai administration officials have also pointed to this as a reason to hold off signing a bilateral security agreement that would allow for u.s. troops to stay in the country after the two thousand and fourteen deadline however washington has insisted there was no manipulation involved the book which gives gates' perspective on the u.s. occupation of afghanistan is scheduled to hit bookstores today. and two former california police officers were found guilty late yesterday in the beating death of kelly thomas attorneys trying to make the case to the jury that fuller fullerton officers manwell ramos and cheech anally abused their authority when they responded to a call that thomas was breaking into cars in two thousand and eleven the officers had used a stun gun and baton to shoot and thomas a thirty seven year old schizophrenic homeless man a surveillance video in the area happened to catch the altercation on camera by the end of the beating thomas' face was bloodied and just this figured he went into

a coma and died five days later ramos and chameli both faced involuntary manslaughter charges in the aftermath but after a brief deliberations were ultimately acquitted in response to the verdict thomas' father ron thomas had this to say. it's hard long for police officers everywhere can be just killers whatever they want to. preserve is going to prove them right here today. to get away with they'll get away with it he was so innocent. it just it just isn't fair at all they murdered by so did they get away with it. and to discuss this a little bit more i was joined earlier by artie's ramon go lindo in our l.a. studio i first asked him how the defense managed to argue against a coroner's report that blamed the beating for caylee's death. the prosecution really their whole case surrounded this videotape in the photographs of killian really the public perception was that these police officers were going to get in

trouble but after some after seen this tape but the defense argued that it wasn't the beating that ultimately killed kelly thomas they brought in their own expert witness saying that it was actually kelly thomas' drug use which weakens his heart and that was the reason for his death ultimately the defense strategy was to go after the victim himself kelly thomas in the they tried to paint him as a dangerous character that had a tendency for violence and at the end they were able to put enough into the jury to where they were able to convict two former police officers right and ramona why did it seem like it was so difficult for prosecutors to convict police officers yeah i mean it's very very rare for a police officer to even go to trial much less be convicted of a crime when it involves some sort of excessive force and this case it was all

caught on video but we have to remember that police departments and prosecutors work hand in hand on a daily basis so prosecutors really rely on police testimony to go after other criminals on a on a regular basis so this tie relationship really makes for a situation where da's are usually pretty reluctant to go after police officers because they know that they're going to have to rely on them for other cases. found for you know what's the next step here is there are chance for an appeal or perhaps for a separate federal trial. right well the district attorney in orange county total recall because it says that he doesn't plan to retry rommel's or since anally he respects the jury's decision but this has a big effect on the trial of officer joe wolf. the d.a. is not going to go after him he was another officer who was also charged on this

the f.b.i. is looking into whether any sort of civil rights violations were committed during trial or at the time of the incident but so far nothing has been announced and remember what is the reaction been from activists who have been following this case you know should we expect to see more people coalesce around this issue going forward. well sure there has been a lot of public outcry and online we've seen days and days of protests there's protests today and there will be more in the days to run tom is here since the beating to have him back in two thousand and eleven has joined with police brutality groups so it does seem like people are rallying around the cause there will be protests but we'll see how long how long this lasts we do remember that there was a ton of outcry right after the beating which forced. which caused three city

council members to resign and ultimately the police chief to step down at the time so there have been some changes within the city but it's you will have to wait and see whether this causes more of a movement to really speak out against these sort of things what have to see what the reaction will be from the community going forward and if another case aside after parties ramon glendon thank you very much you bet and a west virginia county judge has now ordered the company at the heart of the chemical spill that contaminated water in several counties to preserve all documents and evidence relating to the spill this comes at a time when the number of lawsuits against the company are mounting are they going mopeds have the story. after nearly a week of no showers no clean dishes no clean clothes and overall dry conditions the water taps are slowly starting to flow again in charleston the west virginia american water company has been notifying customers on a county by county basis that they can safely use tough water once again after of

course they flush their system of potentially contaminated water left sitting in the pipes in the wake of a historic what are banned in the states now the cause of this unprecedented ban is a chemical spill of a reported seventy five hundred gallons of for meth the cycle hexane methanol or in c h m a by freedom industries it's a chemical used in the coal manufacturing process freedom industries has not spoken with the media normally suppress statements since the press conference on friday evening take a look at this map as of tuesday morning thirty five percent of customers had their water working again represented by all the areas you see here in blue and all of this area you see here in red is where the ban is still in place so quite a few people are still dealing with the aftermath of this chemical crisis particularly those people in more rural less affluent neighborhoods authorities are

now turning their attention to the investigation into how this bill actually happened in the first place an independent federal agency known as the u.s. chemical safety board has appointed team to the area to investigate the spill and has said this quote our goal is to find out what happened to allow a leak of such a magnitude to occur and to assure that the proper safeguards are in place to prevent a similar incident from occurring so now that the situation is starting to finally come down let's take a look at some of the numbers as a result of this leak two hundred thirty one people were reported to local hospitals complaining of suffering from some of the symptoms associated with ingesting this chemical of them. fourteen people were admitted to the hospital to undergo evaluation and treatment no word yet on how many of those people have been released sixty pets were also reported sick local authorities say they found no fish or wildlife dead as a result of the spill and that is because they say that this chemical is toxic yes

but ultimately non-lethal meanwhile at least eighty lawsuits have been filed against freedom industries in the west virginia american water company as a result of the spill none of them have been certified as of yet and more lawsuits are expected to come in the future now the downtown charleston area and surrounding neighborhoods essentially became ghost towns in the wake of this chemical spill and nearly every restaurant was forced to close from thursday evening until saturday costing the businesses millions of dollars in lost revenue schools and nine counties that were affected by this close they remain closed in four counties as they wait for the system to be flushed before they return leaving parents either stay at home or look for a child care provider local business owners are now in the process of contacting their insurance companies to see if they are covered for this type of emergency but even if they are the compensation funds are still no ways out with the claims process the overall economic and long term health effects of this massive spill are

still hazy at best residents are trying to get back to normal but if one thing is certain this story is far from over in washington meghan lopez r.t. . and we're just learning that agents of the u.s. drug enforcement administration and justice department officials have met in secret with members of mexican drug cartels all in exchange for information on rival drug organizations this is all according to a new investigative piece reported by mexico's el universal news according to the report u.s. agents held more than fifty secret meetings with cartel operatives in mexico over over a decade between two thousand and two thousand and twelve and they did so without informing mexican authorities article says quote without the presence of mexican authorities as bilateral agreements stipulate without informing the mexican government the agents of the d.n.a. met with members of the cartels to obtain information about their rivals and

establish at the same time a network of informants of narco traffickers who sign cooperation agreements alone are sol based its reports on extensive interviews as well as official american and mexican court documents according to those documents the u.s. specifically had an arrangement with mexico's in a lower drug cartel that allowed the organization to smuggle billions of dollars of drugs also to lower provided information on rival gangs conservative estimates of the cartels annual revenue is about three billion dollars and according to the head of the d.a.'s office in chicago quoted before this investigation this in a lower drug cartel is responsible for supplying seventy to eighty percent of the drugs and during the chicago area and has a presence in cities across the u.s. to discuss this undercover deal i was joined earlier by andrew canis an investigative journalist based in mexico city i first asked him about these cooperation agreements and what these drug lords were promised and exchange for information about cartel rivals well first of all there's

a contention in terms of which drug lords which immunity agreement what we know for sure is that they're leading a lawyer to see little court to go. through. over six years worth of agreements with the da these are called confidential source agreements and there is no doubt this is that these are documents that were released by the prosecution. there's no contention on either side that this was and continues to be the case is fact even jack riley the head of that she probably. spoke to me extensively several times about this and there's no contention there and now where the contention lies is to what extent immunity agreements like these apply to other cartel leaders and this is where the defense the prosecution for instance. in the loosely translated as pretty boy contends is that these agreements apply to him and other leaders and that in exchange for intel on other groups such as we'll say does he had the same kind of protection that was afforded to their lawyer the

prosecution denies this. kind of spiced up the case in fact a little further and actually also said that not just was intel those being exchanged but that even there was fast and furious weapons as well and i wanted i want to get to that before me dale. in giving the information on rival gangs one of us in a lower cartel essentially getting the u.s. agency to do its dirty work. well sure i mean if that even officials admit that this is literally dirty work that having deals like these with leaders or like these are dirty work in security experts go even farther and say that arranging deals like these that strengthen one cartel over others so that there's let's look at tension and disputed positives and then there were less violence is indeed a legitimate security strategy and it's one that has to be done in a war that's pretty much hard if not impossible to win and so this is their logic for doing these kind of things and that's kind of the logic behind getting intel on

a cartel that's known to be much more despised by both the mexican and u.s. governments as they brag and routinely in narco montrose that they're the only cartel that doesn't have any agreements with the governments there are known for the most heinous and violent violent acts by one trend i want and i want to talk a little bit bribery i want to talk a little bit about that specifically you know during the height of this relationship which was between two thousand and six and two thousand and twelve coincidentally there was a market surge of violence in mexico not to mention that the in a lower cartel saw a steady rise in power during those years so do we know if this you know could be attributed to the silhouettes cartel or the sinhala cartels you know tit for tat with the. i would i would picture that i would paint the picture a little differently and during the height of the drug war it became the case that again the government's refaeli and possibly desperate enough to enter into agreements like these again so it's

a strength in one cartel over the others and have to release the violence be reduced so that there would be more firm control over plazas and list three wars and turf wars and violence and so on and so forth it's pretty well known that both in the key plazas on the border for days and then also to quanah there was some pretty precipitous drops in violence after the peaks when the scene we were cartel was pretty much roundly and mostly largely agreed to as having won the turf war and so this is a strategy that's possibly linked to that i would say and one of the things that somebody. alleged this is the man who was on trial in chicago for all of this is on trial still currently on trial things that i cracked and that the highly controversial fast and furious operation was all part of an agreement to finance and arm the cartel in exchange for information so if that is indeed true doesn't call into question what attorney general eric holder knew about these agreements it

goes even farther than that because you know eric holder's even dean has been prosecuted investigated for possible perjury about what he knew or not and that's that's been covered widely in the mainstream news media. and also what's been covered widely the mainstream news media is that supposedly these fast and furious were lost and that this was a mistake in the case what has really been covered that much is investigative work i don't even know their school or congressional testimony on this for instance one a.t.f. is passé was based mexico city is name is carlos and you know he described the fact that at one point at the height of the fastest years program. there was over a thousand weapons going across the border a hard. percent of those weapons including ones that could be fielded to arm a small of the marine but it was even said we're going to guess what the scene a little cartoon that's literally what the defense with the defense team for this is about

a consensus that this was part of his agreement and this is additional evidence to show that he in fact did have their arrangement with the answer we only have a few seconds left but you know we know that u.s. my fuckin relations have been strained over the years and the approach to the war on drugs what's your sense of how mexico might respond to these revelations well i mean you know what the revelations have been out for quite a long time and the mexican government has pretty much laid there said that they in fact they've even expressed some concern or even some you know anger that they were really put in the know the revelations of an out of the confidential source agreement for instance which is under confidential between the elite in order to seal a cartel and the da has been out there for almost two years now ever since that time that's been the case next conduct there hasn't been any documents or proof to show that the next government didn't you know so it's possible that they were left in the dark on this one but the simple act of actually govern the clear about other

aspects of the drug war but when it comes to the fast and furious operation especially the arrangement they had possibly would visit these about the content of the arrangements it doesn't look like they knew and credible story indeed we'll have to follow up with you on this in the future investigative reporter andrew tennis thank you thanks a lot it's not every day that one of our t.'s own experiences backlash from a news report but that's exactly what happened in the aftermath of a story covered on breaking the set yesterday abby martin brought attention to the plight of independent journalists who've been blocked from being recognized on the collaborative information website with a p.d.f. here's a look at part of that report. this issue calls into question the way with a pedia decide who and what is notable enough to be worthy of the text on its site on the deletion thread editors d'anna and currency eric explain that i'm not notable enough for my own page because apparently they couldn't verify any of the

information about me through third party sources so i found this interesting considering how there are dozens of third party sites that have talked in depth about my work as well as the show including one called white out press der spiegel max kaiser alger miner joe rogan stuart wilde global post and firedoglake yet none of these sites are apparently notable enough to allow me a sacred page. i was joined earlier by breaking the set host abby martin and i asked her how she found out about this issue to begin with. i don't really care if i have a page on my computer i just thought it was funny my dad at christmas is like hey you're on wikipedia it's really cool and i saw that the pages got removed and then it got resubmitted by another user and then it got removed again and someone wrote an article about it saying hey what's the deal and so i kind of just wanted to bring attention to the fact this editing process is actually really a skill how does it work and can anyone just upload and sure enough i guess anyone who is a user can create edit or vote to delete content but there's only

a sacred few admins that can kind of oversee the whole process and they consider anything that's really not corporate media unverifiable third party sources that they can't you know validate your page from being up that's incredible well what happened since you brought up the issue here would be a page yesterday so after we did after i did that report. that someone had given me every version is history because on wikipedia can see the whole thread of everyone who's kind of talking about it and why they chose to make these actions that they did and on the very top it just says user john reeves actually voted to add it to block all non admin users to recreate my page indefinitely so this is basically an explicitly set it explicitly says that he is blocking all non admin users from ever recreating my page so it's kind of i don't know what i think i just have no idea what to say. the fact that even if someone tries to verify these sources book now and you know for sure that that wasn't an issue before yesterday's

broad no i don't know i mean it happened yesterday. it seems like it's a little bit of a quins i think maybe people flooded with competing was saying hey what happened then you just like hey screw this i'm going to block it i think it's a personal bias decision and that's the problem is with this online encyclopedia it is ultimately up to the subjective personal bias of these admins and that's really i think what the editorial decision was and hopefully you know it will be reinstated actually heard from another admin who is like i was lobbying for you i'm going to try to get it back up and just. breaking the set your brain that's that audience sort of been involved in this at all or they've been lobbying we compete in there they're kind of just figuring out i mean i just figured out kind of how kind of a shady this whole process really is there's a whole corporation called wiki p.r. that you can essentially you know pay to make your page verifiable and all this stuff so it really goes back to how it can be bought just like

a democracy it's definitely gotten more difficult i think over the years are a lot of people i know i knew that personally had a book if you get pages that all the sudden were taken down and it's based on a notability standard that really applies to whatever the biases of the admin in question lastly you know a lot of people see it as an accurate source because obviously a lot of those biases and you think of it as this sort of you know generic sort of objective site for information do you think this incident should really change how people perceive the site i mean it definitely changes the way that i perceive this i mean of course teachers will say don't go to wikipedia for your sources but you know you do because and you can link back to the down citations and you can see what everything's going back to but the thing is when you're reading the first paragraph you are influenced by the bias that's put out there by these admins and so really i think it will just take a second look at you know what's deemed to consent absolutely i definitely well i was of breaking the set abby martin. you may remember this viral video from two thousand and seven when andrew meyer tried to ask senator john kerry

a question during a visit to the university of florida. i don't. remember. and the phrase don't tase me bro was born and so it seems a journalistic career was born as well now meyer is joining first amendment watchdog blog photography is not a crime as a staff writer where he will give his particular perspective on police abuse so don't tase me bro has now become don't fire me bro that does it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america check out our web site r t v dot com slash usa you can also follow me on twitter at amir and david.

i marinate join me. for impartial and financial reporting very interesting and much much. only on the best and only. got a quote for you. with me to teach us. they way it's about story. but if this guy like it would smear that guy stead of working for the people most missions in the mainstream media are working for each other dr wright was beaten to death by. the dead rather.

says. he won't do. science technology innovation all the things to melons from around russia we've got the future covered. i've got a quote for you. it's pretty tough. stay with sob story. let's get this guy like you would smear that guy stead of working for the people both issues the mainstream media are working for each other right right vision. of a good writer.