i'm not stopping c.b.s. only take. me like there are. coming up on our t.v. as i says marches toward baghdad the u.s. weighs its military options the pentagon has ordered ships to the region and some u.s. workers have been evacuated from the embassy discuss the crisis in iraq with the former governor of minnesota jesse ventura just ahead. and the f.b.i. is the focus of a good moment hearing for the five men accused of planning the nine eleven attacks our t. is that need to listen in on the hearing and we'll tell you why the f.b.i. is actions in repose a peace deal with and groups in the eastern part of the country this comes as russia consol gas supplies over ukraine's outstanding bills and all that later in the show.

it's monday june sixteenth five pm in washington d.c. i mean you're a david and you're watching r.t. america. we begin today with the latest in iraq today iraqi security officials said an army helicopter had been shot down during clashes with islamic militants west of baghdad violence is sweeping the country as insurgents gain a strong stronger foothold in the north. one by one iraqi cities are falling to an islamist militant group that's determined to move forward in taking control of baghdad the blue dots show the cities isis seize recently last week mosul and to create fell to rebel fighters and just

yesterday militants for control of tal afar which is just west of mosul the takeover of tal afar comes just as sunni militants claimed they had massacred seventeen hundred iraqi security forces in doing so they posted graphic pictures of a mass execution in decreed as evidence and warning of more killing become back here in washington the state department announced yesterday that it had reinforced the security at the u.s. embassy and was relocating some of the u.s. embassy staff to more stable places in and outside of the country at the same time the obama administration has been considering its approach to the situation right now it says everything is on the table from u.s. iranian military cooperation to unilateral airstrikes and the latest is that the white house is even considering sending a small number of american special forces to iraq to how baghdad slow down the insurgency to discuss the next moves for the u.s. earlier i spoke with former minnesota governor and host of off the grid jesse

ventura i first asked him if the u.s. has an obligation to help deescalate the conflict. well i don't know you know let's go back to the iraq war and how it started i mean it was based upon lies to begin with when the united states entered that war way back in two thousand and three we were told weapons of mass destruction and ties to al qaida they all turned out to be false they were all totally bogus and so we go in there we overthrow saddam hussein we occupy them for ten years and now it's all falling apart again well do you want my honest opinion if the united states of america is going to go back into iraq i think george bush and dick cheney should lead the way they should be the first two on the ground in iraq leading now leading us back in there all right oh multiple cities have fallen on its militants and rebels are quickly gaining control of much of the northern part of the country based on the one hand we're seeing

right now what implications for the u.s. if baghdad actually falls to the insurgents. i mean i don't know you know to me it's them forming their own countries you obviously got muslim movements the shiites the sunni's they don't get along they haven't gotten along for thousands of years and they've created these middle eastern countries that put them all together maybe we should look at this is an opportunity for the middle east to create their own countries to where these religions could all have their own separate countries and that way maybe it'll bring some sort of stabilization and and this ludicrous wars that go on there for years and years and years in other words i'm saying maybe it's time for the rest of the world to butt out and allow them to settle their differences themselves these are civil wars going on for let's go back to two thousand and eleven the official pull out of u.s. forces from the country critics now say that the president should have left

a residual force behind after combat or perhaps should have focused more on iraqi prime minister maliki and his approach to sectarianism in transitioning out of out of iraq obviously there is so they have gone and in the first place but in transitioning out couldn't the u.s. have done something differently to avoid the chaos that we're seeing right now. i don't think so this is all internal this is iraq this is religion this is religion fighting itself over there what could the united states possibly do to intervene and make it right and again we are the ones that caused all of this we caused it by destabilizing the iraqi government when we invaded and caused war invaded the country occupied it overthrew its existing government so you know it doesn't surprise me a bit remember i lost a job at m.s.n. v.c. because i opposed the war nobody was opposing the war back in zero three and lo and

behold i look like a soothsayer today don't i. let's talk about what options are on the table for the us right now secretary kerry said recently that the u.s. would be open to discussions with iran over what to do and it did not rule out military cooperation with the country one of the implications of us working with iran and the situation well you know what i think it's wonderful that aspect of it but why should we be working with iran against other muslims over there why can't we stay out of it and allow them to solve their own problems these are religious problems you don't want to get caught up in religion and it's problems trust me isn't and other military action that haven't yet been rolled out of course by then ministration are airstrikes and drone strikes i what are your thoughts on the united states moving forward unilateral unilaterally could this really do more harm

than good in the end. yes i think it absolutely could every time we have a drone strike we create that many more quote terrorists it seems we're out there trying to create terrorists so we have someone to fight because that's all these drones are doing and as i understand it in reading scales book they're operating in about fourteen countries right now with these drones how would we feel if another country flew drones in our country would we allow that of course not you know i'm a believer in major general smedley butler the two time congressional medal of honor winner wrote the great book war is a racket smedley says we need to pass a constitutional amendment that the u.s. troops cannot go over five hundred miles from our border we should pass that because we have the capability to blow up anything in the world why do we need our troops spread out all over the world and us policing the entire world we've got

enough problems in our own backyard why aren't we taking care of the united states problems instead of the world problems do you think it could ultimately create some blowback. the how absolutely it's going to everything we do over there helps to create blowback we are the foreigners we're the ones sticking our nose in there business let me give it to you this way i love to tell this story when the united states was discovered for the anglo-saxon world columbus came here on a mission he was trying to find a way to india by avoiding the middle east now this was five hundred or more years ago they were avoiding the middle east shouldn't we time to learn something why columbus and columbus was willing to defy science because at that time they believed you'd fall off the earth that it was flat but he was willing to fall off the earth rather than go through the middle east i rest my case so for

a secretary of state hillary clinton stated in her recent book hard choices that voting for the iraq war is one of her biggest regrets she now admits that she said quote i thought i had acted in good faith and made the best decision i could with the information i had and i wasn't alone and getting it wrong but i still got it wrong plain and simple as more politicians reverse their stance on the iraq war and do you think their new outlook could influence the u.s. response to the current crisis here. well it won't matter unless it's to save their political jobs let's remember that that's why hillary's doing this now that's why she's coming to grips at the time they were all on board because if you weren't on board you were called unpatriotic if you didn't vote to go to war in iraq you were considered unpatriotic jesse ventura knows that label well because i was speaking

out against the war before it happened and i was labeled unpatriotic for doing that so they're just being typical politicians they're lifting their finger they're holding it up to the wind to find out where public sentiment and how they can save their political careers the great thing about me as an independent i didn't care about a political career i did what i felt was right or wrong i'm pleased hillary has come out and said that but why did she voted back then she voted it to save their political hine dems because they would have been labeled unpatriotic and made a loss their next election and for them democrats and republicans it's all about getting elected over and over and over again that now is host of off the grid former minnesota governor jesse ventura. and now to ukraine where president petro poroshenko has called for a truce and the eastern part of the country a region where the government faces a rebellion by anti-theist separatists and a statement of security chiefs poroshenko says he has ordered. again full control

of ukraine's border with russia this week once a friend here a security says a temporary cease fire should be observed and africa's main to agree on a peace plan meanwhile russia's cutting off oil supply if ukraine a state owned gas giant gazprom told ukraine and has to pay up front for gas after kiev failed to settle its huge debt artie's marina closer eva has more. well we've actually heard from the c.e.o. of gas from alexei miller and he's good meeting with russia's prime minister dmitry medvedev and once again miller said that ukraine's position is a form of blackmail. the position of the ukrainian side can be described as open blackmail the ukrainian government the prime minister wanted gazprom to allow ukraine to pay an ultra low price for gas like those in the customs union and if such low prices were not granted to kiev in ukraine said it would not pay back its

gas that to russia it also said it would take a gas without any payment and in volumes it needs of course such demands are unacceptable for the russian side that's why gas prone and to the prepayment method ten am this morning we also now know that ukraine's prime minister arseniy yatsenyuk has imposed a state of emergency on the country's energy sector of course now has to pay up front if it wants any gas of from russia the price that russia was offering is three hundred eighty five dollars core thousand cubic meters even the e.u. energy chief said that the price was reasonable but again when it comes to ukraine's prime minister he doesn't want to pay any more than the price that was agreed with the previous leadership in ukraine before february's so right now since both sides are can't agree on the price or take matters to the international court ukraine is accusing russia of playing political games or russia simply looking to get its money back now of course as we know many your kitty and countries they're

dreading this period right now because they don't want to see a repeat of what happened in two thousand and six and two thousand and nine and that's when ukraine was called siphoning off gas and time to for them through its transit pipelines and since of course we know that many european countries depend heavily on russian gas their concerns are understandable but right now the ball is in kiev supports and already we know as i said that many european countries are worried that we will see ukraine siphoning gas off of them since they can't get their hands on mars. now as. all summer hauling in immigration catastrophe a surge of thousands of immigrants illegally crossing over the us mexico border most of the new migrants are children from central america and while various media organizations from around the world are questioning what's going on we're now learning that finding the answers to those questions may prove difficult according to an e-mail obtained by the associated press border patrol agents in texas have been instructed not to speak to media outlets the e-mail which was written by an

assistant patrol agent orders more than three thousand border personnel not to speak to reporters about the humanitarian crisis the e-mail allegedly went on to warn agents that they could be disciplined or even charged with a crime if they speak to the media and i as the obama administration struggles to accommodate the massive surge of immigrants by the president biden is adding a stop in guatemala to a planned trip in latin america this week to discourage parents from sending their children to the u.s. on friday he's expected to emphasize that illegal immigration is not safe while meeting with top officials representing guatemala el salvador and honduras. and now to guantanamo bay where the most infamous prisoners at the u.s. detention center are back in front of a military judge today shaikh mohammed along with four other prisoners accused of planning the september eleventh attacks are facing the death penalty a military judge convened an unusual two day pretrial hearing today to gather

information about accusations that f.b.i. agents have been questioning staff of the defense team it's a development that could create another delay in an already prolonging to case earlier i spoke to our t's meghan lopez who attended a special media viewing of the hearing from a military base in fort meade maryland and i first asked her to talk about why this trial continues to be delayed. so this is being called the most complex terrorism trial in the united states history what we have going on in guantanamo bay cuba is five us separate descendants all nine eleven coconspirators chart with the five a separate defense teams so first of all those five separate defense teams play into how long this trial is taking because as you can imagine a single trial with a single defense team has their own arguments make we're talking about five of them also they're being charged for the deaths of two hundred ninety seven two thousand two thousand nine hundred seventy three people in the september eleventh attacks so

obviously there's a lot of evidence to go through there are two hundred ninety three thousand unclassified pages of evidence to go through along with the numerous exhibit one hundred ninety and all as well as the testimony already of twenty two witnesses so what has happened and what has been going on this whole time is since there may twenty twelve or raymond there have been ten different pretrial kind of hearings we're seeing the next kind of slew of them they stopped off in april and we can get into why they stopped off but obviously it's just taking a long time because there are a lot of preacher procedural hearings that need to happen first who as filled not as to the disclosure down the trial when it actually does start taking place and obviously versus being a civilian court this is a military commission which has much more stringent guidelines when it comes to how these procedures work and exactly what steps need to be taken will come about these alleged conspirators and who are these five men that are on trial so all of these

are the nine eleven coconspirators accused obviously of helping plot to complete the nine eleven terror plot the most notable of which is obviously going to be the nine eleven mastermind or so-called mastermind khalid shaikh mohammed along with him in that courtroom is the stuff all house all we he is described as a nine eleven financier and facilitator also m r all baluchi he's described as a fine a nine eleven facilitator who engaged. in helping arrange the travels of thirteen of those nine eleven hijackers also with them is waleed bin a tonge he's described as a nine eleven facilitator he actually helped case the airport security in the united arab emirates to help those those hijackers get onto a plane that would eventually end up in the united states and finally we have ramzi bin al s'shibh he's described as a nine eleven quarter nater who really put all of those efforts all of the coordination into play and getting everyone on the same page for this terror plot

and meghan you were at a special hearing at fort meade watching this all go down what happened today so today is being described as a very special type of pretrial hearing under investigation right now is whether or not the f.b.i. did in fact conduct investigations that resulted in them questioning members of the defense team so they asked the defense team found out in april that four members of the various defense teams might have been questioned by the f.b.i. now those defense teams the people that were questioned were not lawyers at this point we do not know what the investigation was trying to uncover we do not know who was the target of this investigation we don't know what they found if anything what we do know right now is that the f.b.i. investigations are allegedly over or so says the prosecution there are no current investigations going on and that none of those investigations were against those

lawyers themselves but the reason the lawyers are making such a big deal out of this is that they say that this is having a chilling effect one of the lawyer says that he actually put off a trip to the middle east for a fact finding mission because he was afraid that he could be seen as some type of a conspirator himself so they said this is a major chilling effect and they want to know what is going on so when these these defense lawyers are asking for is for f.b.i. agents to testify. to the court on the on the record under oath about what exactly this investigation was trying to get out these two separate investigations and as i understand it was actually made and increased the media presence at this trial as guantanamo bay where is the surge in media interest coming from here. well obviously we're seeing a surge now we're seeing a theater surge both here in fort meade there are about double the amount of reporters that i've seen here but also a good time obey one time obey actually had to switch planes that usually send

a little charter jet over carrying journalists who want to go and attend those a those guantanamo bay hearings in person they had to switch to a c. seventeen cargo jet to accommodate the fifteen journalists that have now asked to go over now what the song results from as you can imagine is the major conflict that arose from the boat for of dol a prisoner swap where he was swapped for five taliban members to qatar so there was a lot of tension a lot of interest in this congressional members were not informed that that swap was happening chuck hagel just testified last week saying that the reason that they weren't notified was because there just wasn't enough time there was too much risk and too much uncertainty in order to be able to warn congress that that was happening so congress is very interested in this journalists are very interested in this and admittedly the public is becoming more interested in the ongoings that went on a mobile also as i mentioned these trials have been held up since april ever since

this f.b.i. kind of investigation came to light so this is the first time in quite a while that we've seen these five people including khalid shaikh mohammed with his orange iconic beard in the courtroom and one of them is actually participating in a hunger strike so it was interesting to kind of see his demeanor. moser to correspond to make a lopez. all right well still secret report from a former nixon aide confirms where many people have already suspected of president richard richard nixon and campaign manager john mitchell south of taj the vietnam war peace talks and were to win the one nine hundred sixty eight elections and an oral history released by the national archives nixon white house aide tom charles huston elaborated on the president's involvement he said over the years as i've studied it i've concluded that there was no doubt that nixon was would have been directly involved but it's not something that anybody would have undertaken on their own house and created the report under orders from the nixon white house to look into our geishas that president johnson had bugged the nixon campaign and

halted the bombing of north vietnam all in an effort to secure peace talks and orchestrate an october surprise to help democratic candidate hubert humphrey win the election austin's report concluded that not only was l.b.j.'s white house guilty of bugging the nixon campaign but then nixon and mitchell played an active role in de railing the peace summit in paris by promising southie and on better terms if they had heard the peace talks nixon's obstructions sparked president johnson to accuse him of treason to republican senator everett dirksen of illinois in this private recording take a listen. some of the. are going to be bad memories embers. and. prayers during. the second. grade and they were harder to get theirs. and they are going to be brighter chremes.

why has it taken so long for this information to finally be released while huston had this to say about nixon and johnson i think there was an implicit understanding between two very politically sophisticated people with been in the arena for a very long time to say hey look this thing is over you know neither one of us are going to gain anything by storing up this pos so there you have it forty years later and still a lot to learn about the nixon presidency which of course ended in his resignation . pluto the sometimes planet planet may be hiding a pretty huge secret well to huge secrets actually astronomers in spain believe that hiding behind pluto obscured from our view our two additional giant planets spanish scientists and madrid discovered the potential for the two massive celestial bodies of the outer reach reaches of our solar system after studying

strange patterns in the orbit of rocky objects around pluto including the newly discovered wharf planet two thousand and twelve v p one one three scientists believe the first hit in were world would be about ten times the mass of earth they believe that this planet is moving in resonance with a bigger planet that is somewhere between mars and jupiter in size and would orbit two hundred times the earth's distance from the sun the can we ever conclusively confirm the existence of these two planets while scott sheppard of the carnegie institution for science had this to say there are only a few of these extremely distant objects known it's hard to say anything definitive about the number or location of any distant planets however in the near future we should have more objects to work with to help us determine the structure of the outer solar system so there you have a time will tell. and before we go don't forget to tune in at nine pm for larry

king now tonight's guest is former n.b.a. player turned actor rick fox here's a bit of what's to come can racism exist in a black oriented elite i mean i call it killing diggs it exists it exists did you see it when you played i think if the street flows in all directions i don't think the but that i think is our current state we strive to improve. daily i think as a society but we regressed some days and his move forward at all i don't delusional off to think that it's not still in society but it has to be buried so you couldn't be a racist coach in the n.b.a. he could you go home would you communicate with it i think those are the guys sometimes that that don't succeed it's not that they don't succeed because they're racist but i think you have to care budget players if you have if you have that

your core. belief of dislike for ethnicity or the individual because of their background that's going to be a disconnect you will win and you will with the nine pm tonight here on our team america and that does it for now i mean you're a david. star wars. feel. like you're the finish line of the current on. the i. want. you.

in the us we were beer our constitution we hold it up to the world as a piece of art really equating its importance in the realm of government to the bible's importance in the realm of religion and yet despite this mean reverence in today's world of government gone wild we can't stop talking about changing our constitution and now our lawmakers are getting more serious about that and more than one hundred legislators representing thirty three of our state attended the mount vernon assembly in indianapolis recently to discuss how to put together a constitutional convention under article five of our constitution is two thirds of

our states or thirty four of them ask for a constitutional convention to make amendments then congress must call what representatives from both sides of the aisle are behind the movement in that conservatives who are angry at how huge our federal government has the common along with our national debt and you've got progressive who are angry at how our government is interpreted in the first and second amendment. they don't like how corporations are now being granted free speech rights and they want to clarify language around our right to bear arms the mt vernon assemblies goal is to work together as a state to address all the ridiculous crabbe our federal government is trying to poll that's right rally against the government is not just for dissenters anymore no now even our state and our legislators are mad at the feds attendees will be discussing how to set up rules and procedures to implement a real constitutional convention and how it all might be financed our country

hasn't held a constitutional convention since seventeen eighty seven so the assembly is taking the first step of figuring out all the logistics these representatives aren't the only people within our government who want to change the constitution either north carolina is writing up its own resolution to call the convention over campaign finance reform and former supreme court justice john paul stevens just wrote a book called fix amendment how and why we should change the constitution first we have the constitution as an immutable perfect document that the rest of the world should ponder over then a few radicals on the fridge began banging their drums about making changes to it and now our lawmakers are finally getting real about making changes to rein in our out of control greed centric.