Highly soluble, easily absorbed. on friday march 1, 2002, a man and his girlfriend were driving home from the mall in maryland. he was wearing a white cap, she was driving. a group of men in a white car pulled up to the pontiac and waved for the couple to pull over. didn t show any id of any kind. they were carrying m-4 assault rifle rifles. and the man reached to open the door, one of the men opened fire on him. joseph schultz was shot twice in the face, those men with no ids and no insignia, they were
i want to thank you for coming. we re announcing the launch of a new set of ads that we re going to preview in a couple of minutes. but we re going to first preview the ad and then we ll have some remarks. people don t like political ads. i don t like them either. but health care isn t about politics, it s about people. although this woman says that she does not like political ads, it is likely that that is not true. because it appears that she earns her living being paid to act in political ads, so it would be weird if she hated them. stop thinking about politics, she says at the end of the ad, she says stop thinking about politics, start thinking about people. people like me who are paid to say this in a political ad. that was a misstep by the people who made these ads. the way this whole soft focus direct to camera, low confrontation empathetic female subject thing works in ads is that it s supposed to have kind of an emotional appeal, you re supposed to connect with the authenticity of this woman s personal story. so when you later hear that isn t an authentic story, it s a actor trying to make you feel this way. it can actually boomerang on the people who are behind these ads. that ad is the work of americans for prosperity. this is a group funded and founded by the billionaire conservative koch brothers. charles and david koch. when you inherit an oil and chemical company from your dad, you can afford to pay people in ads. the koch brothers group has been running versions of that same ad all around the country, months and months and months before the midterm elections happen. you can see that same empathetic actress in vain against democratic candidates in colorado and in louisiana and in new hampshire and in minnesota and in north carolina, and in florida. and of course in arkansas. where polls show the democratic incumbent senator mark pryor is running dead even with his republican challenger, tom cotton. the koch brothers are spending enormous amounts of money on ads for these midterm elections. they have spent $30 million already and we have barely just rounded st. patrick s day. that said, it should be noted that they also spent enormous amounts of money in the last election of 2012. the koch brothers raised $400 million in 2012. it took until 2014 for reporters to count it all up. the koch brothers founded american prosperity alone and spent $122 million against democrats in 2012. what did they get for it? bumpkiss. despite the huge pile of koch bucks, republicans lost the white house again, republicans lost ground in congress and republicans failed to win back the senate. if the koch brothers spent $400 million on the 2012 elections that was $400 million they might as well have poured in a trash bin and set on fire a really big trash bin. and these guys can t really a ford to set $400 million on fire just to watch it burn. i think it s unlikely that the kochs enjoyed their 2012 experience. the koch s went home from the election into sort of a dark night of the soul. you may remember, they had to put off their beloved annual secret fund raising retreat in the california desert. they launched a top to bottom review to try to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it so that the next time they spent hundreds of millions of dollars it would lead to them winning and not losing. after that review, they came back with what they always had. buckets of money, buckets and buckets and buckets of money. that was the old strategy, that s the new strategy too. check this out. the huffington post groups linked to the kochs versus every group spending against the democrats. ready? this is the chart for house. the green bar on the left is the koch spending, the blue one, the much smaller blue bar is the spending by all groups supporting democrats. nine contests around the country koch s lead almost across the board. this is them versus everyone on the other side. but the usual buckets and baskets and front loading bulldozers of money are not all the kochs have brought for 2014. after losing so painfully last time out. money is not all of politics and it s not all that the kochs have decided to buy with their money this year. they have bought the makings of an actual ground game. we are remarkably, natives for prosperity watch party in arkansas. they called for them to come watch the state of the union address. come watch. sounds great, right? we are afp. that was in arkansas where they have been doing phone banks and field offices, people knocking on doors, they have ground game to follow up their ad war in that state. they can spend as much money as they want on watch parties and fancy booths around the state. they may get tired of adding zero after zero after zero to all the checks. that s the only constraint for them. if two of the richest men in the world are determined to funnel infi mat amounts of cash and now they are going to add a gold plated, fully staffed ground game in the states they most want to win, how does anyone fight that? how are democrats going to respond? over the past couple weeks t outlines of the democratic response started to become clear. first, democrats decided on a strategy of naming the koch brothers funded ads as coming from the koch brothers. first, it was a d.c. actress pretending to be an alaskan. now ads on a carbon tax are called false and not true. who s behind the attacks? the koch brothers. the koch brothers. that s part of a run for re-election. we played that when it came out. i think it s unusually good democratic ad. i don t think they are generally good at ads. this is a good one. when we played it, i wonder whether anyone else would get one of these. the answer, i can tell you now, yes, other people are getting adds like this. take a closer look at the ads against mark udall. this woman is an actress. those behind the attacks? insurance companies. billionaires, spending a million supporting cory gardner. why? gardner woulded a forcing seniors to pay $6,000 more a year. the more we learn about congressman gardner, the more troubling it is. senate majority pac ask responsible for the content of this advertising. that ad is running in the colorado senate race. it s part of a group senate majority pac and they have just started running those ads, in essence naming and pointing out the out of state billionaires. and yeah, compared to what the kochs are spending, it s a pun any little ad buy, the koch brothers lose that on the couch on a good friday match. they have spent ten time that is much money already this year, already, in the states they are trying to flip states they are targets to try to flip the senate. the cochs are deeply offended that the democratic side tries to hit back at what they re doing. the koch spokesperson said today that the ad buy naming the koch brothers as the finance years behind the other ads, the spokesperson told us that this is part of a continued attempt to silence private citizens who dare to disagree with the majority leader, harry reid and the current administration. but democrats do seem to think there is a real advantage for them in just pointing out when that ad tells you that obama care isn t working is brought to you by a couple of billionaires who themselves will never, ever have to worry about doctors bills. so the democrats are putting $3 million into that effort and maybe it will help democrats stay competitive in races that are totally swamped by koch money at this point in the race. maybe. even so, that doesn t solve the democrats biggest problem in 2014. not at least according to to the top democrat in the country who knows what he speaks when he speaks elections. president obama said this at a fund racer yesterday in miami, according to remarks that were post bid the white house. he said this. the problem is not that the american people disagree with us on the issues, the challenge is that our politics in washington have become so toxic that people just lose faith and finally they say i m not interested, i m not going to bother, i m not going to vote. and he says that is especially true during the midterms. the president went on to say, during presidential elections, young people vote, women are more likely to vote, blacks, hispanics are more likely to vote. and we do pretty well in presidential elections, but the president said, in the midterms we get clobbered. that s president obama speaking yesterday in florida at a closed press event to raise money for congressional elections this year, but also to make that bigger point about turnout, specifically that fact that in midterm elections, voters who help democrats win presidential elections do tend to stay home in it s just the midterms. key democratic constituents do tend to go missing when it comes time to just pick members of congress, members of senate and a whole lot of state officials. key democrats go missing in the midterm elections by tens of millions. and in the emerging picture of how democrats are planning and trying and hoping to blunt the koch brothers enormous spending advantage, it s turnout, it s good old-fashioned voter turn out where they are trying to direct their efforts. they re going to try to match them ad for ad where they can, but they can t. what the democrats are trying to hang on to their majority in the senate with, is a turnout gain. they have launched at the dscc, the democratic senate campaign, are planning on spending $60 million trying to find and motivate every last possible democratic voter who could possibly be persuaded to head to the polls in november. this isn t just ads and stuff, this is the expensive and difficult daily work they re planning on 4,000 staffers, turning away in ten states in a long term way. but in an election like this one where there s not a president to pick, this may be the democrats only chance but it s what they re trying to do. but democrat have to turn and to save their senate majority and at least not get clobbered in the highways. that is what president obama is saying. they have to reverse the structural dynamics of voter turnout it which are in play before anybody ever spends a dime on campaign ads. and those dynamics would be in play where there s no campaign ads at all. at base level, it is a dollar for dollar contest, but the democrats are trying to do a different thing, they re trying to excite the voters most likely to turn out. where they matter most are not the ones who pay for tv ads. they tell how many voters showed up because you knocked on their door at the right time and got them to their polls. joining us is john stanton, joining us now from buzz feed, mr. stanton, thank you for being here. they re never going to match them ad for ad? that s not possible. do the democrats conceivably have a smart enough idea and a well financed enough idea about turnout that they can mitigate some of the mitigate some of the problems caused for them in terms of the differential they re facing in the obvious? they do, they re doing two thing that is i think are smart. they re talking about income equality which is helping to motivate some young voters and some women voters. they re attacking the koch brothers and making them the boogie men, that could certainly help them. unless they can tap into the obama campaign s ground game and how they were able to pull people out and go into black barbershops and they had the barbers become captain. that one guy that didn t vote in 2008, he came out and vote in the 2012. if they do that, they could have a fighting chance. but the way things are, it s going to be quite difficult for them to maintain the size of their majority and it s going to be a tough fight to keep it at all. in terms of who s working on this stuff, you see the republicans know they re going to have a good year, or they think they are, they re really starting to crow about what the nrcc has put in place and we add to that what we know the koch brothers have paid for, which is a very expensive organization that s been around for months already, they feel confident to brag about that. we re getting a window on who s doing that work on the republican side. on the democratic side, is it the smart kids who are working on this stuff? or is it the leftover folk who is didn t get in on the presidential year? there s some smart folks there. there s been some concern that a lot of the obama folks are starting to pivot toward 2016 and are looking at hillary and are not really playing very hard. and hillary and her people are a little bit concerned about this notion. but it didn t look like they re throwing their weight into 2014. there is a smaller bench, no doubt about it. but they do have some very smart people over there. but, again, it is still early yet. so things could change dramatically. if they get away from some of the foreign policy issues, they could climb back out of this a little bit. it is interesting, for president obama to be making this tactics case, he keeps going to these democratic fund-raisers and these sort of friendly audiences and kind of giving people a hard time and saying, you know what? we re going to get killed here, 2014 is going to be terrible for us, everything is stacked against us, he s using blunt language and he s giving it to democratic donors and saying you re not doing this right. does he i haven t seen him do that before, except in campaigning for himself. sit likely to make a difference? are you seeing it resonate with the people in washington who have to get off their wallets to make it work? a bit. the dccc in the house and the dsc have done very well in their fundraising. this is about him, though. but he didn t just care about keeping the senate and trying to get the house. he cares because he s got two years left in power. he understands, if he goes into those last two years with a republican senate and republican house, he s done, essentially. even if he has a very narrow senate control, he probably can t get anything serious passed. and this is he now is very much motivated by self interest frankly and that s when he s at his best in putting the screws to some of the money people. if democrats can not figure out a way to run a national campaign against the john boehner congress, i would like to make the john boehner congress for every republican congressman in the country, then they, well, then they ll be democrats. john stanton, buzz feed s washington. thanks for being here. coming up, an unusually blunt one word answer in washington today. watch. is the ukraine crisis prompting a fundament yes. the duh was implicit. a big fight just got bigger and that story is ahead. stay with us. salesperson #1: the real deal s the passat tdi clean diesel gets up to 795 highway miles per tank. salesperson #2: actually, we re throwing in a $1,000 fuel reward card. we ve never done that. that s why there s never been a better time to buy a passat 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[ ship horn blows ] no, no, no! stop! humans. one day we re coming up with the theory of relativity, the next. not so much. but that s okay. you re covered with great ideas like optional better car replacement from liberty mutual insurance. total your car, and we give you the money to buy one a model year newer. learn about it at libertymutual.com. liberty mutual insurance. responsibility. what s your policy? on friday march 1, 2002, a man and his girlfriend were driving home from the mall in maryland in her red pontiac. he was wearing a white cap, she was driving. a dprup of men in an unmarked car pulled up to the pontiac and waved for the couple to pull over. they didn t have sirens or anything. didn t show any id of any kind. they were carrying m-4 assault rifles. and the man reached to open the door, one of the men opened fire on him. joseph schultz was shot twice in the face, those men with no ids and no insignia, they were chasing a bank robber. one who was wearing a white hat and traveling in a red car with a female driver. the robber was not joseph schultz, but joseph schultz got shot anyway. while reaching to unlock a car door that a screaming fbi agent told him to unlock. what happens when the fbi agent shoots anybody is the agency that investigates what happened is almost always the fbi itself. a few months ago, the new york times used the freedom of information act to get these records. these are records on 70 people who fbi agents have shot and killed over a 20-year period, from 1993, roughly to 2011. fbi agents shot and killed 70 people in that time period and shot and wounded 80 people so 150 fbi shootings all together. in every one of those instances, the shooting was reviewed by the fbi itself internally and in every one of those instances, in all 150 of those shootings, the fbi determined that the shooting was justified. they re 150 for 150. but when this white hat fib fbi shooting happened in in the joseph schultz case, a number of subtle but important differences surrounding the details of the case. joseph schultz sued and five years later he was awarded $1.5 million for being wrongly shot in the face for doing nothing wrong. part of that deal is the government admitted no wrong doing in the shooting. 150 shootings, zero admission of wrong doing. last may, this young man was shot and killed in his apartment in orlando, florida while being interviewed by fbi agents and massachusetts state troopers. at first it seemed like kind of a local story, something weird had happened in florida with a guy who had connections to crime in massachusetts. then it seem likes a sidebar story to the boston bombings when we learned that the man who had been shot was friends with the older suspect in the bombings. then there were leaks. there hadn t been any other witnesses, but they said that he lunged at agents with a knife. another leak said forget the knife and the blade, actually it was a bloom stick. nix that. another leak said it was a ceremonial sword or actually another leak said he overturned a table and threw a chair. that was why he got killed. by the way, one more leak, he was a confessed murderer. he was just about to write down his confession to a triple murder in massachusetts before he went crazy and he had to be put down. the leaks contradicted themselves. but they were all expull tour for those who shot him. we still have no official evidence or testimony about what happened in that shooting. no official explanation, even the autopsy report is still being blocked from public release by the fbi. the only reason we know that he was shot seven times, including once in the back of the head is because his friend took photos of his body at the morgue when he was called in to identify the body. that friend has been barred from reentering the united states after having left the country to go to his funeral. those unsanctioned and less than official true details, right? and utter lack of any transparency from the fbi have led to some public outrage in this case and some media attention. reporters and editorial pages in the boston press have been sharply critical of authorities, along with the aclu and the family in russia have all called for an independent investigation. local authorities claim they have no jurisdiction either in florida where the shooting happened or in massachusetts. that s why it was a really big deal in august when the state attorney in florida, named jeffrey ashton announced that his office was going to conduct it s own independent investigation into the killing of ibrahim. this is a state level prosecutor in florida. unlike the 2002 case of joseph schultz and his girlfriend, there were no witnesses outside of the fbi agents and massachusetts state trooper who is were in the room where he was interviewing him when he was killed. they came that he was going to confess to a triple murder. we haven t seen any written confession, we haven t seen any recording of the interview, we haven t heard or seen any reliable account other than from anonymous sources who always seem to say that the agents did nothing wrong. so the florida report is going to be hugely important here. it may be the only independent information we get on this. we have been waiting for that report since august. late last month it was announced that the investigation results would be completed by the end of this month. it was believed to be tuesday would be the big day, next tuesday. then today, oh, law enforcement leak. another big leak in the story and wouldn t you know it, a big self-exculpatory leak. law enforcement officials unnamed of course, not only will the department of justice not charge anybody in the fbi, that the shooting has been ruled at the federal level justified that the fbi needed to use deadly force that day. we re also being told, again, by anonymous sources that that investigation by the independent source in florida, by the state prosecutor of florida, that one we were expecting to not hear anything about until next tuesday, we re also hearing from self-exculpatory anonymous sources that will investigation will also clear the fbi. we reached out to the florida state attorney s office today. these leaks purport to say what s going to be in that official report that s released on tuesday. we asked, did those leaks come from investigators in florida? is what those anonymous leakers saying true? is the fbi absolutely in the clear here? the state prosecutor in florida actually told us no. sources inside the office investigating the todashev shooting say they have not made a determination yet about whether to charge anyone in the todashev shooting is unfair and unaccurate to his family. so a mysterious, messed up and completely opaque incident of deadly force got even weirder today. might today s anonymous leaks be true? will authorities in florida find the fbi s use of force was justified here? we don t know that yet. we re going to know next week, when an actual independent report on the use of lethal force is officially released to the public. we do not yet know the answer to that question. a new business owner, it would be one thing i ve learned is my philosophy is real simple american express open forum is an on-line community, that helps our members connect and share ideas to make smart business decisions. if you mess up, fess up. be your partners best partner. we built it for our members, but it s open for everyone. there s not one way to do something. no details too small. american express open forum. this is what membership is. this is what membership does. cut! 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[ male announcer ] campbell s chunky soup. it fills you up right. here s the latest news on the missing plane, malaysian airlines flight 370. there is no news on the missing plane. today is day 14 of the search, there are no developments to report, other than another day has gone by without more nice, that s it. we ll let you know if that changes, but we ll not change the lack of news into something that sounds like news when it isn t, we ll be right back. anybody have occasional constipation, diarrhea, gas, bloating? one phillips colon health probiotic cap each day helps defend against these digestive issues with three types of good bacteria. i should probably take this. live the regular life. phillips . i jbut they blacked me out.ht these miles are useless! that s turrible. and all the other dates are triple the miles! triple the miles? that s as useless as chuck at a golf tournament. or you at the three point line. or you in a spelling bee. you gotta switch to the venture card from 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name stock exchanges, but the big ones are not the only ones. this is the russian stock exchange which operates out of moscow. i think i m saying that right. it s worth about $750 billion as opposed to $13 trillion traded in new york. but the myse is the main stock market in russia, today it cratered. it lost nearly 3% of its entire value today. what happened in russia today, the equivalent of that happening here would be if the dow dropped 500 points in a day. the reason the russian stock exchange cratered today is apparently because of sanctions, the wrench that s now being tightened arnds russia s economy in the united states and europe. obama announced the third escalation of the sanctions in russia. in making that announcement, president obama said he was also prepared to escalate sanctions even further to include whole sectors of the russian economy. it now appears that those sanctions and the threat of new sanctions are having at least some of their intended effect. the wall street journal today reporting that russia s blue chip stocks, the ones that are always supposed to perform so well, they saw a decline because many of those companies are of those people newly added to the sanctions list. in addition to adding politically connected russian zillionaries added to the sanctions list yesterday, president obama also made the unilateral decision to cut off one russian bank, considered to be the bank of the russian elite. it s own by a businessman in the west as vladimir putin s personal banker. yesterday, that private bank was immediately starved of the access to the global currency that is american dollars and today, the american credit card companies visa and mastercard announced that they would immediately stop servicing the bank. vladimir putin references that on the day his government formally annexed crimea. he was going to immediately open a new bank account at the plan listed bank, he said he would have his presidential salary sent there. it was a little unexpected when at the same time vladimir putin was publicly trying to laugh off this new round of sanctions, the sanctions are already taking a toll on the russian economy he said russia will likely have to cancel plans to borrow funds abroad. and as both the s&p ratings downgrade russia s credit status, the bonds could rise and in addition to curtailing their foreign borrowing, they might have to cut down on the domestic form of it. too the rubble is already down 10% against the dollar this year meaning that rubbles buy 10% less than they used to, that phenomenon is considered likely to get worse. but even before today s big drop in the stock market, russian stocks on average were all down 10% before today, since putin declared that russia had the right to invade the ukraine. most of the sanctions have come from the united states, by executive orders signed by president obama. with the expectation that there is more to come. in addition to the u.s. sanctions, though, before today, the european union has sanctioned 21 people, but today they added more. they did it in a very cloak and dagger way. the thing about sanctions is they are evadable if you know they re coming. if you have money in accounts overseas or otherwise stashed overseas, you can transfer those assets home before you get sanctioned. if you have money in a bank that is likely to be frozen or compromised, if it s going to happen, take your money out of the bank. if you know sanctions are coming, they might not hurt. so the europeans today took sort of extraordinary measures to keep the new sanctions secret until the very last moment. a the meeting where they decided the 12 names they were going to add to the list of sanctioned russians today, it was only national leaders allowed in the room. no aides, no staffers, no wi-fi in the room and no cell phone service in the room. the idea was to keep the list totally secret so financial institutions could act on the list. so the people on the list wouldn t have a chance to move their money out of the way before it was too late. european leaders also said today they were formulating a plan to quote, wean themselves off of russian oil and gas, hoping to have a plan formulated by mid year to buy energy from nonrussian sources. the energy sector of course is russia s biggest economic driver and cutting off energy sales would potentially land the hardest blow against that country. there have never been sanctions like this on russia since the end of the cold war. george w. bush didn t do anything like this when russia invaded georgia, for example, while he was president. what s being done against russia is unprecedented and it seems like it s going to keep going. potentially, much further and more strict. if this is going to be the weapon here, if it s not going to be a military war, it s going to be an economic war, how do we expect russia to react? given today s fresh evidence that even as they try to laugh off the sanctions, they re already beginning to have their intended effect. joining me is michael mcphal thank for being with us. sure, thanks for having me. president obama announces two rounds of sanctions, is threatening a third. is what he s doing scaleable in a way that we should understand that there s more to come and that we should have expected the kind of economic response that we saw today in russia? well, first, i want to underscore something you just said about how unprecedented this is. this kind of sanctions, this targeted sanctions against individuals and now one bank is not something we even did during the cold war. this is quite unprecedented. it s a new instrument of foreign policy. practiced by the obama administration when i was there against iran and now you re seeing it with targeted individuals from russia and you re seeing the results that you jut described. what the president made clear in his statement when he announced this is what you see today is the punishment for annexation. it doesn t mean he thinks putin is going to leave crimea, he doesn t think it s going to change putin s calculus, president obama said there would be punishment if this happened, that was the punishment. the new executive order that he signed that you referred to that he can go after sectors of the economy tharks is meant as a deterrent for president putin from going into u crane. i thought president obama made that clear, if there is more escalation of violence, then he will go in that direction. does that mean, just to be clear, that the punishment phase of this over, absent further russian action, the u.s. won t do anything else? i m not sure. i do not know that. i know that from my previous time in government, putting together these lists, you have to make a case, you have to do due diligence, and i wouldn t be surprised if there would be more names with respect to the punishment phase. i don t know for sure. how would you expect russia to react, president putin publicly is making noises about not wanting further retaliation, i don t tend to believe anything he says in public, and also their past behavior suggests that they don t just sort of mirror western actions, they tend to react more strongly to anything we do rather than trying to have an equal and opposite reaction. what do you think he s going to do? there s putin reacting to the threat of sanctions and there s a lot of other russians reacting to the sanctions that are already there. i think we need to think about both of those groups. with respect to putin, i listened closely to his speech earlier today. i m ready to believe that he does not have a plan to invade eastern ukraine, but i also don t think he had a plan to invade crimea, what happened was there was a crisis, there was an event that triggered that that was the fall of the government in kiev. so he lashed out in a tactic going into a crimea, and that s what i fear the most, if there s violence in eastern ukraine, ukrainian young guys with guns, going after russian young guys with guns going after ukrainians. it will probably be guys, not gals. but if that happens and its escalates and there s fighting and an action reaction process, then putin will be tempted to act because he said, i m going to protect russian citizens, russians, not russian citizens, russians living abroad. that s the scenario that scares me the most. when the national security adviser susan ris was asked about the russian military exercises that are going on right near the ukraine and russia, she essentially scoffed and she said we don t think those are just military exercises, essentially being skeptical about what s going on there, that may be a planned invasion. we saw earlier things on the eve of crimea. moreover, these are act ticks of coercion, these are tactics of threats. the russians still want to destabilize ukraine, of course, that s part of their objective right now. and this is part of their strategy. michael mcphal, former ambassador to russia, thanks for being with us tonight. it s nice to have you here. we ll be right back. not just a start up. an upstart. gotta get going. gotta be good. good? good. growth is the goal. how do we do that? i talked to ups. they ll help us out. new technology. smart advice. we focus on the business and they take care of the logistics. ups? good going. we get good. that s great. great. great. great. great. great. great. great. great. (all) great! i love logistics. innovative cc cream from nice n easy. our advanced treatment helps keep highlights and lowlights shiny and luminous. cc cream, find it in every box of nice n easy. the most natural shade of you. this is mike. his long race day starts with back pain. .and a choice. take 4 advil in a day which is 2 aleve. .for all day relief. start your engines great. this is the last thing i need.) seriously? let s take this puppy over to midas and get you some of the good ol midas touch. hey you know what? i ll drive! i really didn t think this through. brakes, tires, oil, everything. (whistling) the guy who invented protesting military funerals because he hated gay people is no longer among us. and you ll be surprised to know that there is greatness in his legacy. seriously, i swear. this will make you happy, it s coming up right at the end of the show tonight, stay with us. 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[ bottle ] ensure®. nutrition in charge™. with very few exceptions we do not no obituaries on the show. and we re not going to do one tonight. the way you can tell this is not an obituary for the head of the westboro baptist church is because nothing in this story will require me to say his name. sorksz so, i m not going to say it. the church became fascination and revulsion when the man who was the cult leader for this extended family, pseudoreligious compound in kansas decided the way to spread his particular version of the gospel was by trying very hard to upset people. by trolling the country, essentially. they first showed up with their big taunting cursing profane signs at the funerals of people who had died of aids. they also picketed the funerals of anyone gay who had died for any reason, including picketing the funerals of people who had been murdered for being gay. and their message was very simple they just hated gay people. they cited biblical justification for hating gay people. they wished all gay people were dead. they thought anybody who didn t hate gay people as much as they were essentially aiding and abetting the horrible crime of homosexuality and was equally damned because of it. and for that reason, that mind set let inexorably that made them famous outside of just their gay community. in their quest to, demonstrate their own depth of hatred for gay people, they started trolling the whole country, not just the gay community. their public demonstration strategy moved on from directly going after gay people to picketing funerals and picketing other events that celebrated anyone who was a beloved american. they picketed the funeral of bill clinton s mother. they picketed the funeral of al gore s dad. they picketed the funeral of coal miners killed in a mining accident. they picketed the funeral of jerry fallwell because he wasn t anti-gay enough for them. there s nothing to celebrate about america enough as a nation as long as america tolerates the existence of openly gay people. that s why they started targeting the funeral of soldiers. so say there s no such thing as an american hero as long as america is a place that doesn t stone gay people to death. they said thank god for the ied s that kill american soldiers. we pray for more american soldiers to die since that is god s way of showing his disapproval of a country that doesn t hate gay people enough. that has been their reasoning. all along, for years. and now that the founder of the cult who, not incidentally, is the biological father of a lot of people in the cult, now that he has died, it will be interesting to see if his 13 children and 54 grandchildren and his growing covey of great grandchildren evolve in their strategy, too, or whether the westboro baptist church cult will wither away. and on one level, who cares. it s like caring about whether or not world net daily is going to do another where s the birth certificate birth or whether or not donald trump really means it this time that he s going to have run for president. who cares. make money however you want to make money. make a ruckus. we re a free freaking country. free enough for all of you. but there is something important, i think, and worth noting tonight about the westboro cult now that its founder has died. that is that the cult has, over the past 20 years, been an american inspiration. seriously. as they try to hurt people s feeling, to dmon straight their depth of feeling to hurt the families of loved ones, they know they are being offensive, right. that s on purpose. they want to shock casually anti-gaye religious people in this country into hardening their beliefs. stop being such squishes, right? stop tolerating a culture that recognizes gay people s rights. that s what they were trying to do. but instead increasingly over the years, people rose up against them to try to stop, or at least interfere with the hurt that they were trying to cause. in order to demonstrate their point. i think it probably started with the angels wings folks, the people who built those huge architectural angels wings for themselves hung with white sheets to protect the family of matthew shepherd. the wings just blocked the view of those protesters. when they started picketing soldier funerals, the patriot guard on motorcycles formed a loud massive flag-carrying human buffer between the westboro people and the military funeral procession and the family. it s also occasionally been a one-on-one thing. and occasionally a very funny one-on-one thing. there s the god hates signs rebuttal, which i thought was very effective. this guy, i, too, have a sign. god hates signs. mourn for our signs. god hates plastic bags. this one turns up a lot. god hates figs. and god hates yeast. there s biblical citations on the signs. god hates figs is a popular one. it is true, that part of the gospel of mark, i looked it up today. it is really anti-fig. mark 11, jesus is adamantly anti-figs. there s also plenty of biblical justifications, god hates shrimp. god hates cotton poly blends. not sure what s going on with the pirate in the foreground. but i bet i m for it. who they just used anti-gay signs as if their words are more like prefixes. ho mo sex is sin. their ubiquitous god hates fags message has been rebutted by a dog who feels exactly the opposite. and also apparently by god himself, who begs to differ with the westboro cult. the cult despite itself has been an inspiration to americans all over the country wherever they shown up. it s weird to say, but they have indirectly caused a lot of good works out of our own human revulsion out of their cruelty. when michael sam came out and they came to the university to protest their existence, thousands of college students turned out in the cold and the snow to make a human wall to wall off the protesters from the man they were trying to hurt. this is not an obituary for the head of the westboro baptist church. he s gone, dead at the age of 84. there s not going to be a funeral for him. let him be remembered as someone who did bring out the best in people and provided cruelty that ended up being a very, very clarifying thing for all of us. weekends with alex witt starts now. breaking news this hour. another possible image of airplane debris reported. this time, the chinese government says they have a satellite picture of remnants of mh 370. a short time ago, they reported this news. he says he got that words from the chinese ambassador. where is the debris and how old is the satellite image? good morning, everybody. welcome to weekends with alex witt. i m in for alex today. here is what happened over an hour ago in kuala lumpur. th
but we re going to first preview the ad and then we ll have some remarks. people don t like political ads. i don t like them either. but health care isn t about politics, it s about people. although this woman says that she does not like political ads, it is likely that that is not true. because it appears that she earns her living being paid to act in political ads, so it would be weird if she hated them. stop thinking about politics, she says at 2e67d of the ad, she says stop thinking about politics, start thinking about people. people like me who are paid to say this in a political ad. that was a misstep by the people who made these ads. the way this whole soft focus direct to camera, low confrontation empathetic female subject thing works in ads is that it s supposed to have kind of an emotional appeal, you re supposed to connect with the authenticity of this woman s personal story. so when you later hear that isn t an authentic story, it s a woman who s paid to feel this way. it can actually boom raerang one people who are behind these ads. this is a group funded and founded by the billionaire conservative coke brothers, charles and david coke. when you inherit an oil and chemical company from your dad, you can afford to pay people in ads. the coke brothers group has been running versions of that same ad all around the country, months and months and months before the midterm elections happen. you can see that same empathetic actress in vain against democratic candidates in colorado and in louisiana and in new hampshire and in minnesota and in north carolina, and in florida. and of course in arkansas. where polls show the democratic incumbent senator mark pryor is running dead even with his republican challenger, tom the coke brothers are spending enormous amounts of money on ads for these midterm elections. they have spent $30 million already and we have barely just rounded st. patrick s day. it should be noted that they also spent enormous amounts of money in the last election of 2012. the coke brothers raised $400 million in 2012. it took until 2014 for reporters to count it all up. the koch brothers spent $122 million against democrats in 2012. what did they get for it? bumpkiss. republicans lost the white house again, republicans lost ground in congress and republicans failed to win back the senate. if the koch brothers spent $400 million on the 2012 elections that was $400 million they might as well have poured in a trash bin and set on fire a really big trash bin. and these guys can t really afford to spend $400 million on fire just to watch it burn. i think it s unlikely that the kochs enjoyed their 2012 experience. they went home into skort of a dark night of the soul. you may remember, they had to put off their beloved annual secret fund raising retreat in the california desert. they launched a top to bottom review to try to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it so that the next time they spent hundreds of millions of dollars it would lead to them winning and not losing. after that review, they came back with what they always had. buckets of money, buckets and budgets of money. that was the old strategy, that s the new strategy too. the huffington post groups linked to the kochs versus every group spending against the democrat democrats. the green bar on the left is the koch spending, the blue one, the much masmaller blue bar is the spending of all democrats. nine contests around the country tkochs lead almost across the board. this is them versus everyone on the other side. but the usual bucketings and baskets and front loading bulldozers of money are not all the kochs have brought for 2014. money is not all of politics and it s not all that the kochs have desicided to buy with their mon this time. the krgs och brothers that was in arkansas where they have also been doing fund bakes and field offices, they have got people knocking on doors, they have got ground game to follow up their huge ad war in is that state. the kochs really can spend all they want on watch parties and booths in the local fairs. they may get tired of adding zero after zero after zero to all those checks, that s basically the only restraint they ve got. if they re willing to funnel millions and millions of dollar year crowned professional class ground game in the state that is most want to win, how does anyone fight that? how are democrat goesing to respond? over the past couple of weeks the outlines of the democratic response have at least started to become clear. first democrats have decided on a strategy of naming the koch brothers funded ads as coming from the koch brothers. first it was a d.c. actress pretending to be an alaska, now ads attacking mark begich on a who s behind the attacks? the koch brothers. the billionaire koch brothers. we played that begich ad when its first came out because i think it is an unusually good democratic ad. when we played this a couple of weeks ago, as an example of a good democratic ad, i wondered if anyone else would get one of these. the answer, i can tell you now is yes, other people are getting ads like this. take a closer look at those ads against mark udall, this woman, she s an actress, those behind the attacks, insurance companies and out of state billionaires, spending a million supporting cory gardner. why? gardner woulded a forcing seniors to pay $6,000 more a year. the more we learn about congressman gardner, the more troubling it is. senate majority pac ask responsible for the content of this advertising. it s part of an ad by the senate majority pac, they have just started running those ads in essence naming and pointing out the out of state bill joione billionaires. and yeah, compared to what the kochs are spending, it s a pun any little ad buy, the koch brothers lose that on the couch on a good friday match. still, though, it s amazing, the kochs are deeply offended that the democratic side are even tries to hit back at what they re doing. the koch spokesperson said today that the ad buy naming the koch brothers as the finance years behind the other ads, the spokesperson told us that this is part of a continued attempt to silence private citizens who dare to disagree with the majority leader, harry reid and the current administration. but democrats do seem to think there is a real advantage for them in just pointing out when that ad tells you that obama care isn t working is brought to you by a couple of billionaires who themselves will never, ever have to worry about doctors bills. so the democrats are putting $3 million into that effort and maybe it will help democrats stay competitive in races that are totally swamped by koch money at this point in the race. maybe. even so, that doesn t solve the democrats biggest problem in 2014. president obama said this at a fund racer yesterday in miami, according to remarks that were post bid the white house. he said this. the problem is not that the american people disagree with us on the issues, the challenge is that our politics in washington have become so toxic that people just lose faith and finally they say i m not interested, i m not going to bother, i m not going to vote. and he says that is especially true during the midterms. the president went on to say, during presidential elections, young people vote, women, blacks hispanics are more likely to vote. and we do pretty well in presidential elections, but the president said, in the midterms we get clobbered. that s president obama speaking yesterday in florida at a closed press event to raise money for congressional elections this year, but also to make that bigger point about turnout, specifically that fact that in midterm elections, votered who help democrats win presidential elections do tend to stay home in it s just the midterms. do tend to go missing when it comes time to just pick members of congress, members of senate and a whole lot of state officials. key democrats go missing in the midterm elections by tens of millions. and in the emerging picture of how democrats are planning and trying and hoping to blunt the koch brothers enormous spending advantage, it s turnout, it s good old-fashioned voter turn out is where they re trying to direct their efforts. they re going to try to match them ad for ad where they can, but they can t. what the democrats are trying to hang on to their majority in the senate with, is a turnout gain. the democratic senate campaign, are planning on spending $60 million trying to find and motivate every last possible democratic voter who could possibly be persuaded to head to the polls in november. this isn t just ads and stuff, inns the expensive and difficult daily work, they re planning on 4,000 staffers but in an election year like this one. it may be their only chance, but it is what they re trying to do. but democrat have to turn and to save their senate majority and at least not get clobbered in the highways. they have to reverse the structural dynamics of voter turnout it which are in play before anybody ever spends a dime on campaign ads. at base level, it is a dollar for dollar contest, but the democrats are trying to do a quantityively different thicker. they re the ones that tell you how many of your voters showed up because you knocked on their door at the right time and got them to the polls. joining us is john stanton, joining us now from buzz feed, mr. stanton, thank you for being here. they re never going to match them ad for ad? that s not possible. do the democrats conceivably have a smart enough idea and a well financed enough idea about turnout that they can mitigate some of the mitigate some of the problems caused for them in the face of the differential they re facing in the obvious? they re doing two things that i think are smart on the nestic side. they re talking about income equality which is helping to motivate some young voters and some women voters. they re attacking the koch brothers and making them the boogie men, that could certainly help them. but in tapping into the obama campaign s ground game, where they were able to go into for instance black barbershops and they had the barbers become captain. that one guy that didn t vote in 2008, he came out and vote in the 2012. if they do that, they could have a fighting chance. but the way things are, it s going to be quite difficult for them to maintain the size of their majority and it s going to be a tough fight to keep it at all. in terms of who s working on this stuff, you see the republicans know they re going to have a good year, or they think they are, they re really starting to crow about what the nrcc has put in place and we add to that what we know the koch brothers have paid for, which is a very expensive organization that s been around for months already, they feel confident to brag about that. on the democratic side, is it the smart kids who are working on this stuff? or is it the left year folks who didn t get in on the presidential year? there s some smart folks there. there s been some concern that a lot of the obama folks are starting to pivot toward 2016 and are looking at hillary and are not really playing very hard. and hillary and her people are a little bit concerned about this notion. but it didn t look like they re throwing their weight into 2014. there is a smaller bench, no doubt about it. but they do have some very smart people over there. but it s a very early story yet, so things could change dramatically. if they get away from some of the foreign policy issues, they could climb back out of this a little bit. it is interesting, for president obama to be making this tactics case, he keeps going to these democratic fund-raisers and these sort of friendly audiences and kind of giving people a hard time and saying, you know what? we re going to get killed here, 2014 is going to be terrible for us, everyone is stacked against us, he s using blunt language and he s giving it to democratic donors and saying you re not doing this right. does he i haven t seen him do that before, except in campaigning for himself. sit likely to make a difference? are you seeing it resonate with the people in washington who have to get off their wallets to make it work? i think this is. the dccc in the house and the dsc have done very well in their fundraising. but he didn t just care about keeping the senate and trying to get the house. he cares because he s got two years left in power. if he goes into those last two years and he has a republican senate and a republican house, he s done essentially. even if he has a very narrow senate control, he probably can t get anything serious passed. and this is he now is very much motivated by self interest frankly and that s when he s at his best in putting the screws to some of the money people. if democrats can not figure out a way to run a national campaign against the john boehner congress, i would like to make the john boehner congress for every republican congressman in the country, then they, well, then they ll be democrats. john stanton, buzz feed s washington. thanks for being here. coming up, an unusually blunt one word answer in washington today. is the ukraine crisis prompting a fundament yes. the duh was implicit. a big fight just got bigger and that story is ahead. stay with us. told ya you could do it. (dad vo) i want her to be safe. so, i taught her what i could and got her a subaru. (girl) piece of cake. (announcer) love. it s what makes a subaru, a subaru. you re an emailing, texting, master of the digital universe. but do you protect yourself? apparently not. when you access everything, you give everyone access to everything about you. but that s ok. while you do your thing. [ alert rings ] we ll be here at lifelock, doing our thing. watching out for things your credit card alone can t. [ alert rings ] and relentlessly protecting your identity. get lifelock protection and live life free. 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(music) defiance is in our bones. defiance never grows old. citracal maximum. calcium citrate plus d. highly soluble, easily absorbed. on friday march 1, 2002, a man and his girlfriend were driving home from the mall in maryland. he was wearing a white cap, she was driving. a group of men in a white car pulled up to the pontiac and waved for the couple to pull over. didn t show any id of any kind. they were carrying m-4 assault rifle rifles. and the man reached to open the door, one of the men opened fire on him. joseph schultz was shot twice in the face, those men with no ids and no insignia, they were chasing a bank robber. the robber was not joseph schultz, but joseph schultz got shot anyway. what happens when the fbi agent shoots anybody is the agency that investigates what happened is almost always the fbi itself. these are records on 70 people who fbi agents have shot and killed over a 20-year period, from 1993, roughly to 2011. fbi agents shot and killed ee0 people in that time weird, in every one of those instances the shooting was reviewed by the fbi itself internally and in every one of those instances, in all 150 of those shootings, the fbi determined that the shooting was justified. they re 150 for 150. but when this white hat fib sho fbi shooting happened in in the joseph schultz case, a number of subtle but important differences surrounding the details of the case. joseph schultz sued and five years later he was awarded $1.5 million for being wrongly shot in the face for doing nothing wrong. but the government admitted no wrong doing in the shooting. 150 shootings, zero admission of wrong doing. last may, this young man was shot and killed in his apartment in orlando, florida while being interviewed by fbi agents and massachusetts state troopers. at first it seemed like kind of a local story, something weird had happened in florida with a guy who had connections to crime in massachusetts. then it seem likes a sidebar story to the boston bombings when we learned that the man who had been shot was friends with the older suspect in the bombings, tsarnaev there hadn t been any other witnesses, but they said that he lunged at agents with a knife. another leak said forget the knife and the blade, actually it was a bloom stick. another leak said it was a ceremonial sword or actually another leak said he overturned a table and threw a chair. that was why he got killed. one more leak, he was a confessed murder. he was just about to write down his confession to a triple murder in massachusetts before he went crazy and he had to be put down. the leaks contra zikted themselves. but they were all exkulpaory for those who shot him. we still have no official evidence or testimony about what happened in that shooting. no official explanation, even the autopsy report is still being blocked from public release by the fbi. the only reason we know that he was shot seven times, including once in the back of the head is because his friend took photos of his body at the morgue when he was called in to identify the body. those unsanctioned and less than official true details, right? and utter lack of any transparency from the fbi have led to some public outrage in this case and some media attention. reporters and editorial pages in the boston press have been sharply critical of authorities, along with the aclu and the family in russia have all called for an independent investigation. that s why it was a really big deal in august when the state attorney in florida, named jeffrey ashton announced that his office was going to conduct it s own independent investigation into the killing of ibrahim. this is a state level prosecutor in florida. there were no witnesses outside of the fbi agents and massachusetts state troopers who in the room, who were interviewing him when he was killed. they came that he was going to confess to a triple murder. we haven t seen any written confession, we haven t seen any recording of the interview, we haven t heard or seen any reliable account other than from anonymous sources who always seem to say that the agents did nothing wrong. so the florida report is going to be hugely important here. it may be the only independent information we get on this. we have been waiting for that report since august. late last month it was announced that the investigation results would be completed by the end of this month. it was believed to be tuesday would be the big day, next tuesday. law enforcement leak, another big leak in the story, wouldn t you know it, a big self-exculpatory leak. law enforcement officials unnamed of course, not only will the department of justice not charge anybody in the fbi, that the shooting has been ruled at the federal level justified that the fbi needed to use deadly force that day. we re also being told, again, by anonymous sources that that investigation by the independent source in florida, by the state prosecutor of florida, that one we were expecting to not hear anything about until next tuesday, we re also hearing from self-exculpatory anonymous sources that will investigation will also clear the fbi. these leaks purport to say what s going to be in that official report that s released on tuesday. we asked, did those leaks come from investigators in florida? is what those anonymous leakers saying true? is the fbi absolutely in the clear here? the state prosecutor in florida actually told us no. sources inside the office investigating the todashev shooting say they have not made a determination yet about whether to charge anyone in the todashev shooting is unfair and unaccurate. so a mysterious, messed up and completely opaque incident of deadly force got even weirder today. will authorities in florida find the fbi s use of force was justified here? we don t know that yet. we re going to know next week, when an actual independent report on the use of lethal force is officially released to the public. 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(laughs) it s more than just a meal, it s meow mix mealtime. with wholesome ingredients and irresistible taste, no wonder it s the only one cats ask for by name. here s the latest news on the missing plane, malaysian airlines flight 370. there is no news on the missing plane. today is day 14 of the search, there are no developments to report, other than another day has gone by without more nice, that s it. we ll let you know if that changes, but we ll not change the lack of news into something that sounds like news when it isn t, we ll be right back. if .hey breathing s hard. know the feeling? copd includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis. spiriva is a once-daily inhaled copd maintenance treatment that helps open my obstructed airways for a full 24 hours. spiriva helps me breathe easier. spiriva handihaler tiotropium bromide inhalation powder does not replace fast-acting inhalers for sudden symptoms. tell your doctor if you have kidney problems, glaucoma, trouble urinating, or an enlarged prostate. these may worsen with spiriva. discuss all medicines you take, even eye drops. stop taking spiriva and seek immediate medical help if your breathing suddenly worsens, your throat or tongue swells, you get hives, vision changes or eye pain, or problems passing urine. other side effects include dry mouth and constipation. nothing can reverse copd. spiriva helps me breathe better. does breathing with copd weigh you down? don t wait to ask your doctor about spiriva. peoi go to angie s listt for all kinds of reasons. to gauge whether or not the projects will be done in a timely fashion and within budget. angie s list members can tell you which provider is the best in town. you ll find reviews on everything from home repair to healthcare. now that we re expecting, i like the fact i can go onto angie s list and look for pediatricians. the service providers that i ve found on angie s list actually have blown me away. find out why more than two million members count on angie s list. angie s list reviews you can trust. does your mouth often feel dry? a dry mouth can be a side effect of many medications but it can also lead to tooth decay and bad breath. that s why there s biotene. available as an oral rinse, toothpaste, spray or gel, biotene can provide soothing relief, and it helps keep your mouth healthy, too. remember, while your medication is doing you good, a dry mouth isn t. biotene for people who suffer from dry mouth. the big eggs stock exchange in the world is here in new york. the value of the new york stock exchange is over $13 trillion. hundreds of billions of dollars are traded every day in this city, which also happens to be home to the second largest exchange on the planet, the nasdaq, you have two exchanges, you have the tokyo exchange in japan, the ftse exchange in lontd. those are the big name stock exchanges, but the big ones are not the only ones. this is the russian stock exchange which operates out of moscow. i think i m saying that right. it s worth about $750 billion as opposed to $13 trillion traded in new york. but the myse is the main stock market in russia, today it cratered. it lost nearly 3% of its entire value today. what happened in russia today, the equivalent of that happening here would be if the dow dropped 500 points in a day. the reason the russian stock exchange cratered today is apparently because of sanctions, the wrench that s now being tighteneds around russia s economy in the united states and europe. obama announced the third escalation of the sanctions in russia. in making that announcement, president obama said he was also prepared to escalate sanctions even further to include whole sectors of the russian economy. it now appears that those sanctions and the threat of new sanctions are having at least some of their intended effect. the wall street journal today reporting that russia s blue chip stocks, the ones that are always supposed to perform so well, they saw a decline because many of those companies are of those people newly added to the sanctions list. in addition to adding politically connected russian zillionaries added to the sanctions list yesterday, president obama also made the unilateral decision to cut off the russian bank of the russian s elite. it s own by a businessman in the west as vladimir putin s personal banker. that bank was immediately starved of the global currency that is american dollars and today the american credit card companies visa and mastercard announced that they would immediately stop servicing the bank. vladimir putin preferenced that on the day his government formally annexed crimea. he was going to immediately open a new bank account at the plan listed bank, he said he would have his presidential salary sent there. it was a little unexpected when at the same time vladimir putin was publicly trying to laugh off this new round of sanctions, the sanctions are already taking a toll on the russian economy russia will have to cancel plans to borrow funds abroad. and as both the s&p ratings alg cities go to downgrade russia s credit status, is price of our bonds could rise, and in addition to curtailing their foreign borrowing, they might have to cut down on the domestic form of it. too the rubble is already down 10% against the dollar this year meaning that rubbles buy 10% less than they used to, that phenomenon is considered likely to get worse. but even before today s big drop in the stock market, russian stocks on average were all down 10% before today, since putin declared that russia had the right to invade the ukraine. most of the sanctions have come from executive orders signed by president obama. with the expectation that there is more to come. in addition to the u.s. sanctions, though, before today, the european union has sanctioned 21 people, but today they added more. the thing about sanctions is they are evadable if you know they re coming. if you have money in accounts overskaes or otherwise stashed overseas, you can transfer those assets home before you get sanctioned. you just withdraw it or you move it somewhere else. if you know sanctions are coming, they might not hurt. so the europeans today took sort of extraordinary measures to keep the new sanctions secret until the similar last moment. a the meeting where they decided the 12 names they were going to add to the list of sanctioned russians today, it was only national leaders allowed in the room. no aides, no staffers, no wi-fi in the room. the idea was to keep the list totally secret so financial institutions could act on the list. european leaders also said today they were formulating a plan to quote, wean themselves off of russian oil and gas, hoping to have a plan formulated by mid year to bye energy from nonrussian sources. the energy sector of course is russia s biggest economic driver and cutting off energy sales would potentially land the hardest blow against that country. there have never been sanctions like this on russia since the end of the cold war. george w. bush didn t do anything like this when russia insladed georgia for example while he was president. what s being done against russia is unprecedented and it seems like it s going to keep going. if it s not going to be a military war, it s going to be an economic war. how do we expect russia to react, given today s fresh evidence that even as they try to laugh off the sanctions, they re already beginning to have their intended effect. joining me is michael mcphal thank for being with us. president obama announces two rounds of sanctions, is threatening a third. is what he s doing scaleable in a way that we should understand that there s more to come and that we should have expected the kind of economic response that we saw today in russia? well, first, i want to underscore something you just said about how unprecedented this is. this kind of sanctions, this targeted sanctions against individuals and now one bank is not something we even did during the cold war. this is quite unprecedented. it s a new instrument of foreign policy. practiced by the obama administration when i was there against iran and now you re seeing it with targeted individuals from russia and you re seeing the results that you jut described. what the president made clear in his statement when he announced this is what you see today is the punishment for annexation. it doesn t mean he thinks putin is going to leave crimea, he doesn t think it s going to change putin s calculus, president obama said there would be punishment if this happened, there was punishment. the new executive order that he signed secondly, that is meant oz a deterrent for president putin from going into the ukraine. i thought president obama made that clear, if there is more escalation of violence, then he will go in that direction. does that mean, just to be clear, that the punishment phase of this over, absent further russian action, the u.s. won t do anything else? i m not sure. i do not know that. i know that from my previous time in government, putting together these lists, you have to make a case, you have to do due diligence, and i wouldn t be surprised if there would be more names with respect to the punishment phase. i don t know for sure. how would you expect russia to react, president putin publicly is making noises about not wanting further retaliation, i don t tend to believe anything he says in public, and also their past behavior suggests that they don t just sort of mirror western actions, they tend to react more strongly to anything we do rather than trying to have an equal and opposite reaction. what do you think he s going to do? there s putin reacting to the threat of sanctions and there s a lot of other russians reacting to the sanctions that are already there. with respect to pugh tictiputin listened closely to his speech earlier today, i m ready too believe that he does not have a plan to invade eastern ukraine, but i also don t think he had a plan to invade crimea, what happened was, there was a crisis, there was an event that triggered that, that was the fall of the government in kievk so he lashed out in a tactic going into a crimea, and that s what i fear the most, if there s violence in eastern ukraine, ukrainian young guys with guns, going after russian young guys with guns. but if that happens and its escalates and there s fighting and an action reaction process, then putin will be tempted to act because he said, i m going to protect russian citizens, russians, not russian citizens, russians living abroad. that s the scenario that scares me the most. when the national security advisor susan rice was asked the russian military exercises that are going on right near the ukraine and russia, she essentially scoffed, and said we don t think those are just military exercises, essentially being skeptical about what s going on there, that that may be a planned invasion. we saw earlier things on the eve of crimea. moreover, these are act ticks of coercion, these are tactics of threats. the russians still want to destabilize ukraine, of course, that s part of their objective right now. and this is part of their strategy. michael mcphal, former ambassador to russia, thanks for being with us tonight. instead of mailing everyone my vacation photos, i m saving a ton of time by posting them to my wall. oh, i like that one. it s so quick! it s just like my car insurance. i saved 15% in just 15 minutes. i saved more than that in half the time. i unfriend you. that s not how it works. that s not how any of this works. 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(vo) meee-ow, business pro. meee-ow. go national. go like a pro. the guy who invented protesting military funerals because he hated gay people is no longer among us. and you ll be surprised to know that there is greatness in his legacy. seriously, i swear. this will make you happy, it s coming up right at with very few exceptions we do not no obituaries on the show. and we re not going to do one tonight. the way you can tell this is not an obituary for the head of the westboro baptist church is because nothing in this story will require me to say his name. the church became fascination and revulsion when the man who was the cult leard for this come pound in kansas decided in 1991 is the way he should spread his particular version of the gospel was by trying very hard to upset people. by trolling the country, essentially. they first showed up with their big taunting cursing profane signs at the funerals of people who had died of aids. they also picketed the funerals of anyone gay who had died for any reason, including picketing the funerals of people who had been murdered for being gay. and their message was very simple they just hated gay people. they cited biblical justification for hating gay people. they wished all gay people were dead. they thought anybody who didn t hate gay people as much as they were did were essentially aiding and abetting the horrible crime of homosexuality and was equally damned because of it. and for that reason, that moindset let inexorably that made them famous outside of just their gay community. in their quest to, demonstrate their own depth of hatred for gay people, they started trolling the whole country, not just the gay community. their public demonstration strategy moved on from directly going after gay people to picketing funerals and picketing other events that celebrated anyone who was a beloved american. they picketed the funeral of bill clinton s mother. they picketed the funeral of al gore s dad. they picketed the funeral of coal miners killed in a mining accident. jerry falwell wasn t anti-gay enough for them. there s nothing to celebrate about america enough as a nation as long as america tolerates the existence of openly gay people. that s why they started targeting the funeral of soldiers. so say there s no such thing as an american hero as long as america is a place that doesn t stone gay people to death. they said thank god for the ied s that kill american soldiers. we pay for more american soldiers to die since that is god s way of showing his disapproval of a country that doesn t hate gay people enough. that has been their reasoning. a all along for years. and now that the founder of the cult who, not incidentally, is the biological father of a lot of people in the cult, now that he has died, it will be interesting to see if his 13 children and 54 grandchildren and his growing covey of great grandchildren evolve in their strategy, too, or whether the westboro baptist church cult will wither away. and on one level, who cares. it s like caring about whether or not world net daily is going to do another where s the birth certificate birth or whether or not donald trump really means it this time that he s going to have run for president. who cares. make a ruckus. we re a free freaking country. free enough for all of you. but there is something important, i think, and worth noting tonight about the westboro cowestbo westboro cult now that its founder has died. the cult has for the past 20 years been an american inspiration. as they try to show their own depth of feeling tom hurt the families of loved ones. they want to shock casually anti-gay religious people in this country into hardening their beliefs. stop being such squishes, right? stop tolerating a culture that recognizes gay people s rights. that s what they were trying to do. but instead increasingly over the years, people rose up against them to try to stop, or at least interfere with the hurt that they were trying to cause. in order to demonstrate their point. i think it probably started with the angels wings folks, the people who built those huge architectural angels wings for themselves hupg with white sheets to protect the family of matthew shepherd. the wings just blocked the view of those protesters. when they started picketing soldier funerals, the patriot guard on motorcycles formed a loud massive flag-carrying human buffer between the westboro people and the military funeral procession and the family. it s also occasionally been a one-on-one thing. and occasionally a very funny one-on-one thing. there s the god hates signs eare bu rebuttal. this guy, i, too, have a sign. god hates signs. mourn for our signs. god hates plastic bags. this one turns up a lot. god hates figs. and god hates yeast. there s biblical citations on the signs. it is true, that part of the gospel of mark, i looked it up today. it is really anti-fig. mark 11, jesus is adamantly anti-figs. there s also plenty of biblical justifications, god hates shrimp. god hates cotton poly blends. not sure what s going on with the pirate in the foreground. but i bet i m for it. who they just used anti-gay signs as if their words are more like prefixes. homo sex is great! their ubiquitous god hates fags message has been rebutted by a dog who feels exactly the opposite. and also apparently by god himself, who begs to differ with the westboro cult. the cult despite itself has been an inspiration to americans all over the country wherever they shown up. they have indirectly caused a lot of good works out of our own human revulsion out of their cru cruelty. when michael sam came out and they came to the university to protest their existence, thousands of college students kurn turned out in the gold and snow to make a human wall. this is not an obituary for the head of the westboro baptist church. he s gone, dead at the age of 80. but someone, despite himself, actually did bring out the best in meepeople, and endep being a very, very clarifying thing for all of us. that does it for us tonight. see you again tomorrow night. have a great night. paul ryan takes it to the streets and gets fact checked. it s now morning in australia and the planes are back over the water for day 15 of this search. lost contact with a plane bound for beijing.
james comey to head the fbi, newly disclosed documents reveal the fbi has cleared its agents in every single shooting incident dating back two decades. we will speak to pulitzer prize- winning new york times reporter charlie savage. then drones over the united states. does the fbi use drones for surveillance on u.s. soil? yes. as outgoing fbi director robert mueller confirms the agency s use of drones, we will speak with heidi boghosian, author of the new book, spying on democracy: government surveillance, corporate power and public resistance. and we remember the late actor james gandolfini. while best known for his role is to a soprano, he produced two documentaries focused on injured military veterans, the effects of ptsd, and the emotional cost of war. sure they give the metals and alive, butou you are you feel and the. you feel like he lost. like you lost. thank you. no, man, thank you. we will speak with the filmmakers who worked with james gandolfini on the documentaries, jon alpert and matthew o neil. all that and more coming up. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i m amy goodman. or disclosures have emerged from the leaked surveillance operations of the nsa. documents published by the guardian thursday show the nsa can retain the personal information of americans even if collected without a warrant. under rules adopted by the form intelligence surveillance court, americans emails and phone records can be helped if inadvertently seized in the process of monitoring a foreigner or containing significant intelligence or evidence of crimes. the guidelines show the nsa generally destroys information in a berkeley gathered on u.s. citizens unless the information is encrypted. in those cases, the data is retained help kraft encryption more broadly. encryption uc davis nossel is the targeting by the nsa if it is deemed to resemble methods by a foreign power or territory. the nsa has communications between attorneys and clients were they were under criminal indictment. portions lead to a massacre would be singled out. in a statement, the aclu said the revelations new details have emerged meanwhile on ties between u.s. intelligence and the nation s largest technology firms. the new york times reports the online communications giant skype created a secret program to develop ways of providing the government with easy access to customers information. dubbed project chess, the program was established to navigate the legal and technical obstacles to enabling government monitoring of skype calls and chats. the new york times has also revealed the former chief security officer for facebook has been working for the national security agency since leaving facebook in 2010. speculation continues to grow over whether nsa whistleblower edward snowden will seek political asylum in iceland. wikileaks founder julian assange says his been in touch with snowden s legal team. on thursday, an icelandic businessman tied to wikileaks said he is ready to approve a plan to fly snowden from china should the government grant him asylum. federal officials have confirmed they ve been investigating for more than the year the profit from that conducted snowden s background check. the company is the largest contractor vetting security clearances for the u.s. government. it is report al-libi reportedly being scrutinized for systematic failure to properly vet employees. the house has defeated the $500 billion farm bill that would have imposed radical cuts to food stamps for low-income americans. the measure called for $20 billion in cuts to the food stamps program over the next decade. nearly 2 million people would have lost access to food stamps, and 200,000 children would have been denied school lunches. republicans also passed an amount that would have allowed states to impose work requirements of the stamp recipients. former lee, herself a food stamp recipient, denounced what she called a further attack on poor families. i know from personal experience and no one wants to be on food stamps. many are hard-working people making minimum wage and others are desperately looking for a job in these difficult economic times. this and it demands hungry families search for a job even while it eliminates all employment assistance and job training funds for those very families. let s not pretend i m making a family supper more hunger and desperation and more hardship that a job will suddenly appear for them. although the work requirement amendment passed, 62 republicans ultimately helped democrats defeat the overall legislation because they wanted even deeper cuts. after the vote, nancy pelosi mocked republicans, calling their handling of the farm bill demonstration of major amateur hour. a group of republican senators has unveiled a measure that would radically expand border enforcement in order to win support within their party for immigration reform. the proposal would double the number of border guards to 40,000. it would also fund the completion of 700 miles of fencing and surveillance. in a statement, the aclu criticized proposals saying the senate move comes as the immigration bill faces uncertainty in the house, where speaker john boehner says he won t allow a vote unless it enjoys a majority of republican support. an estimated 1 million people rallied across brazil on thursday in a historic escalation of the country s largest protest in two decades. the demonstrations were held more than 80 cities across brazil, one day after the cities of sao paulo and rio de janeiro revoked transit fare hikes that set off the initial transitions demonstrations, but have since grown into a movement against government corruption, inequality, failing public services, police brutality, and government spending on the 2014 world cup and the 2016 summer olympics. thursday s protests aren t concluded an estimated 300,000 in rio, over 100 and thousands of paulo, and tens of thousands in the capital. at least 150 people are dead following massive flash floods in northern india. rains and landslides have left 50,000 hindu pilgrims trapped in a mountainous state. more than 33,000 have been rescued. and report from the world bank is warning a global temperature rise of two degrees celsius will trap millions of people in poverty and devastation in the coming decades. they said unless global warming can be slowed, rising to butchers will wreak havoc on poor communities and som. the earth will have fundamentally changed. the way the earth processes water will have changed, so we will have droughts that will be devastating. we will have floods that will put cities in danger. there will be fundamental issues and around the ability of poor people to sustain itself. the thing i worry most about is 2 degrees celsius world will prevent us from lifting people out of poverty. our goal of ending poverty by 2013 will be out of reach. a new study is warning that women worldwide more than one-third of women worldwide are victimized by sexual or physical assault from a partner. for the first time brings together the data on the prevalence of different forms of violence against women, and shows the problem is widespread and excessively high. one in three women globally are affected by physical or sexual violence from a partner or non partner. of violence against women is a global problem. it is widespread at unacceptably high levels. according to the study, 40% of women killed worldwide were slain by a partner. details on u.s. drone strike in yemen, mcclatchy reports in addition to killing five militants, the strike killed the lead targets ever brother, a 10- year-old boy. the attack occurred june 9, just weeks after president obama is a dress promising greater transparency and caution in the waging of drone strikes abroad. it set off a wave of complaints from local tribal leaders. one told mcclatchy the pentagon says calls for military doctors to stop the force feeding of hunger striking guantanamo prisoners have fallen on deaf ears. a group of top doctors and specialists recently published an open plea for their colleagues in the military to boycott the first reading of prisoners force feeding the prisoners. is spokesperson said military doctors have rejected the concerns. this is a lawful order. ourink i spoke to medical folks this morning on that very issue and he said we that hasd anyone voiced any concern, so the american medical association it is their opinion, but the law and policy is to preserve life through lawful means. 104 of the 166 remaining prisoners are on strike, but the defense attorney said the number is higher. at least 44 are being force fed through tubes. jury selection has concluded in a murder trial of george tianemazimmerman. zimmerman will face a six member, all female panel, five of them white. he faces up to life in prison. the fbi is denying rumors it is investigating the late journalist michael hastings before his death in a los angeles car crash earlier this week. wikileaks said one of its attorneys had heard directly from hastings he was under fbi investigation. in a statement on thursday, the bureau responded christian group devoted to so-called gate conversion has closed its doors and apologized to the lgbt community. exodus international had billed itself as the oldest christian ministry devoted to the practice of trying to shame gay people in a changing the sexual orientation. in an open letter to those who underwent its practices, but to this international president alan chambers of the group was part of a system of ignorance saying california last year became the first detonation banning so- called conversion therapy aimed at minors. two philadelphia public school parents and two workers have launched a hunger strike against a wave of school closures and staff layoffs. the philadelphia school district announced earlier this month the firing of 1200 employees lunchtimes aides responsible for safety and serving food to students. they are among 3800 school workers to stand lose their jobs next month in the city s bid to close at $300 million funding gap. philadelphia is also closing 23 public schools. the hunger strikers are camping out of from the pennsylvania governor s field office in downtown philadelphia during the day and sleeping in a nearby church at night. in chicago, the school year ended this year with a sit-in at one of the 49 schools being closed down under a plan approved earlier this year. and those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i m amy goodman with juan gonzalez. welcome to all our listeners and viewers from around the country and around the world. as president obama prepares to nominate james comey today to head the fbi, the agency is facing new questions over how it handles shootings involving fbi agents. a new look at the fbi s internal destinations has found the bureau has cleared its agents in every single shooting incident dating back two decades. according to the new york times, from 1993 until today, the fbi shootings were deemed justified in the fatal shootings of 70 people and wounding of 80 others. out of 289 shootings that are found to be deliberate, no agent was disciplined except for letters of censure in five cases. even in the case for the bureau paid a shooting victim over $1 million to settle a lawsuit, the internal review did not find the agent who shot the man culpable. the issue of fbi accountability has recently re- emerged following last month s fatal shooting of ibragim interrogatedwas over his ties to one of the suspects in the boston marathon bombing. the washington post and several tv news organizations reported he was unarmed, citing unnamed law enforcement officials. on thursday, i spoke to pulitzer prize-winning journalist charlie savage, the washington correspondent for the new york times. he co-wrote the recent article called, the fbi deemed agents faultless in 150 shootings. charlieby asking savaged to lay out what he found. before this recent shooting incident in orlando, which remains murky, he said the fbi is committed he was not armed. another version is, he attacked an agent with a knife. another says he was brandishing a pole. who knows what happens in that room happened in that room. before that i ve been looking into fbi shooting incidents over many years. we fought a freedom of information act lawsuit to obtain the internal records at fbi shooting reviews, every time they should pull a trigger they have a review. for all of the deliberate shootings dating back to 1993. suddenly, timely, because the fbi just shot this man under very murky circumstances, and typically is the case when the fbi kill someone or shoot someone, local homicide conducting an not independent investigation to try to figure out what happened. they defer to the federal bureau of investigation to investigate itself. what this enormous pile of documents that we eventually obtained, all delivered shooting incidents dating back to 1993, shows come in every instance and fbi 20 year span, where an bullet hit someone, it either killed or wounded them, that was deliberately fired, the agency cleared the agent of any wrongdoing. they found it was a justified shoot, a good shoot. there were five supposed what it would call bad shoes were agents received a letter of censure for things like firing a warning shot up a crowd. none of those involved anyone getting hit by a bullet. you quote professor samuel walker who teaches criminal justice about the problem. this is a professor who studies in eternal law enforcement investigations. he said this very low rate of finding shoes basically zero when someone was hurt, or an animal some of these are shooting dogs while serving an arrest warrant for something was suspiciously low. of course we don t know it means that in fact something was wrong, it is just suspiciously low. one of the problems in the value waiting this documents that, containing over 2000 pages, as i said earlier, overwhelmingly often with few exceptions, no independently produced investigative report by some other authority where you could put the two report side by side and see if this is an accurate portrayal of what happened are not. there s good reason to believe the fbi would have a generally lower rate of bad shootings because unlike a city police force, the fbi agents tend to be older, better trained, more experienced, and perhaps most importantly, they re not patrolling the streets and responding to in progress crimes and chaotic situations. when they go in arresting people and so forth, it tends to be preplanned operations where they go in with overwhelming force and that will minimize chaos. yes, they still killed or wounded 150 people over 20 years and is kind of remarkable not once in all of that time, even in an instant or the bureau ended up paying over $1 million to someone who was shot by an agent, did they find internally that that was not a justified shooting. charlie savage, you referred to this piece, the summit of $1 million of a man shot in 2002. can you describe that case? let me preface it by saying why this is a case were looking at. it is not the case is particularly different than others, although there are some oddities about it, and it is over a decade old, but what is interesting is it is rare exception to the rule there is nothing to look at the the fbi s own narrative of what at. in this case there was an independent investigation by a local police detective and there was a lawsuit that led to the discovery before it was finally settled and there was some additional investigations that were conducted as part of that litigation. so there was a lot of alternative information alongside the fbi s own version of events to see at least whether they dovetailed or there were some discrepancies. and there were discrepancies. the fbi was looking for a bank robbery suspect they thought was when becoming by convenience store in a white baseball cap, and a car driven by his sister. unfortunately, another man fitting that description who was innocent came back in a white baseball cap and a car driven by his girlfriend. the fbi thought it was the bank robbery suspect and chased down the car, swarmed it, surrounded it with guns. a moment later, shot mr. shultz in the face. miraculously, he survived. the bullet deflected off a piece of metal on the clip that holds the seat belt so it s sort of hit his jaw rather than his head. he underwent facial reconstruction surgery and the fbi eventually paid or should say taxpayers paid $1.3 million to settle that lawsuit. and yet internally, the fbi deemed it to have been a good shoe. the internal report shows one member of the panel looking at this did not think so, but he was outvoted by the rest of them who said the totality of circumstances around the the tally of the circumstances says it was understandable. you see a series of small but important ways the narrative omitted information or exaggerated information in a way that made it much more sympathetic to the agent who pulled the trigger and these alternative reports, including one by this police detective who is a neutral party, look like. the fbi since spent a full page describing what happened after they turned on lights and sirens until they finally pulled over the car. then make it sound like an extended chase. they talk about how the car rapidly accelerated. how the fbi agents had to shout over and over for them to pull over and finally brought it to rest, maybe 100 yards away, approximately. when you look at the alternative reports, first of all, a forensic crash reconstruction specialist said the car could of been going no more than 12 miles an hour. the police detective noted it was in a merge lane so it wouldn t have to accelerate a little bit. an internal sketch creed by the fbi but not in this report, put it stopped at 142 feet from the intersection, not 100 yards. so the fbi s report created the sense of quite a chase that would have made it more reasonable to assume the person in the car was a desperate and dangerous person. another example is the fbi s report that was sent to this review group did not contain anything from the statement by the victim and it did not live at a crucial fact was in dispute. the crucial fact was, how did this i move before the agent shot him? in the fbi s report, is says the agent who shot him said, show me your hands. in fact to move down to his left, so he thought was reaching for a gun and shot him. the victims said, he had been moving to the right because another agent was simultaneously shot and open the door. he was listening to that agents. we don t know what is true, but the fact that there are disputed facts is relevant and that was not put in the fbi s narrative. it only came out because of the internal external investigation. joseph schultz said he was responding to another officer telling him to open the door? that is right. he said was reaching to his right to open the door as opposed to the agent who shot him in who said he saw him reach into the left. we don t know which of those accounts is true, but the relevant issue is, the fbi s internal review panel that deemed as a good shoe did not have that information in front of them in the near the produced by the review team but this is more than a decade ago. it is one incident rid it is not novel to me at this stage whether this is in aberration or a this is something to happen more often. the overwhelming majority at the time, there is no alternative investigation or loss to thicket s dismissed right away by a judge and a motion for summary judgment without reaching the stage of discovery and having evidence collected. most of the time people being shot our criminal suspects, the people the drug dealer or whoever thought was going to go and be arrested, so there is not a lot of public sympathy, i think, or interest in the judiciary in looking at those cases. the oddity of this one particular case were was a totally innocent victim overcame those hurdles and convinced the police department they wanted to do their own investigation and convince the judge and the court to let it get to discovery, and that is how we know in this case something was audit. charlie savage, you said you got over 2100 pages from the fbi. did you uncover any information about the killing of the 72- year-old puerto rican independent activist shot dead by the fbi in 2005, and according to an autopsy, he bled to death after being hit with a single bullet? officials did not enter his home until the following day, many hours after he was shot. he was wanted in a 1983 bank heist. i did not look carefully at that case and i m not sure if it is in the section of documents or not. i put them all up on the web. i invite viewers to know anything about particular incidence is back in 1983, to go back and look at that. ofre are a handful incidents that did not go through this process. the justice department or inspector general, rather, has the right to take away a shooting incident investigation from the fbi at the onset. there was one from puerto rico, i don t know if it is the one that involved a police officer who shot from about five or six years ago, that was not in the documents that because the jd we did a search of the documents you put on line, and this is not in that 2100 pages. because they pulled it out. that was charlie savage, washington correspondent for the new york times who covered the recent article headlined, the fbi deemed agents faultless in 150 shootings. we will have a link to it on democracynow.org. when we come back, drones over the united states. stay with us. [music break] this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i m amy goodman with juan gonzalez. we turn now to other fbi news, the agency acknowledged the use of drones to carry out surveillance within the u.s. on wednesday, and the questioning by republican senator chuck grassley june hearing at the senate judiciary committee, fbi director robert mueller confirmed the domestic use of drones. he also said the bureau was still drafting regulations to address privacy concerns. we are in the initial stages of doing that and i will tell you our footprint is very small. we are exploring not only the use, but also the necessary guidelines for that use. does the fbi use drones for surveillance on u.s. soil? yes. i want to go onto a question let me put it in context. the very, very minimal way and very seldom. in a statement, democratic senator mark udall questioned whether drone spying is constitutional, saying meanwhile in the latest leak of classified nsa material, the guardian reported thursday the nsa can keep copies of intercepted communications from or about u.s. citizens if the material contains significant intelligence or evidence of crimes. the foreign intelligence surveillance court or fisa court signed off on rules that appear to grant wide latitude to the nsa in making use of data, rather than minimizing its usage, according to the report. to talk about the issue of domestic surveillance, we re joined by heidi boghosian, whose new book examines increasing monitoring of ordinary citizens, and the corporations that work with the government to mine data collected from a wide range of electronic sources. she is executive director of the national lawyers guild. her forthcoming book is called, spying on democracy: government surveillance, corporate power and public resistance. in august.ut welcome. let s talk about drones over the united states, how they re used. both conservatives and liberals have been claiming for years that drone use in the united states is [indiscernible] the reason is, they can be made in any size. researchers are looking into how butterflies move so that they could craft drones the size of mosquitoes or birds. they have the ability to have infrared cameras on them, heat sensors, and also the ability to stay airborne they call it loitering for long periods of time reid contractors such as boeing and raytheon are looking into ways to keep them airborne longer. the danger of being with small drones, they can pass in dense urban areas such as new york city into an apartment building, stay there and conduct surveillance. even now drones have the capacity to have heat sensors to determine, i think through a 1 foot concrete wall, if people are moving around inside. so diffuse what a mosquito, you could be charged with damaging government property? arguese defending drones it is no different than a helicopter flying over a scene, that there is no real civil liberties issue, unless of course they come into apartments. they say it is not much different than the technology. it is very different. drones do not require a space from which to depart the way manned vehicles do. furthermore, technology has not kept abreast with developments in the law. as was cited earlier, the regulations are really lagging behind safeguards about how they can be used. there is a rush right now by military contractors and law enforcement agencies around the country to tell the faa how they can integrate drones into domestic aerospace in the next two years. billions of dollars have been given to contractors for that purpose. nyc mayor michael bloomberg, march said the use of domestic surveillance drones by new york city authorities and the erosion of privacy, he talks about this. worldng into a different and charge it and like it or not, what people can do or what governments can do is different and to some extent you can control the cannot keep the tides from coming in. we are quick to have more visibility and less privacy we re going to have more visibility and less privacy. it is not a question of it is good or bad, but i don t see how you can stop it. it benefits large corporations to have a snug .elationship .e have privacy it is small aircraft were able to monitor is over long periods of time, track bar associations, trap us, that presents a huge problem. this whole issue of corporations and government cooperating on surveillance, you talk about that in your book drones not just book, other surveillance in general. you talk about fusion centers. what are those? they were created around 2003 to 2007 as a better way to coordinate intelligence across the country. the problem is a partner with the private sector, the business industry, so they share intelligence with one another. it is obvious to businesses best interest to increase the amount of data they can because there also improving analytics for the government to avail themselves of an order to make sense of the vast amounts of data that is being collected. so technologies being developed that the government relies on. big money is pouring into corporations. in exchange, a private sector is giving that information to the government. but could a former nsa cia director chart michael hayden who oversaw much of the privatization from 1999 to 2005. this is from 2011. we may come to a point where defense is more actively and aggressively defined even for the private sector. what is permitted there is something we would never let the private sector do in physical space. throw out a bumper sticker. how about a digital blackwater? we have privatized certain defense activities even in physical space, and now you have a new domain in which we don t have any paths trampled down in the forest in terms of what it is expected government or allow the government to do. in the past in history when that has happened, the private sector expands to fill the empty space. i am not quite an advocate for that. but these are the kinds of things that will be put into play here very quickly. that was the former nsa and say director general michael hayden, talking about digital blackwater. mcconnell is not top guy. is now top guy. a lot of government agencies hire people from the public sector and vice versa. defcon, the hacker convention every year, you ll see a lot of government officials there. they rely on individuals with technological expertise. they really need each other. i think one of the dangers is private sector can operate with impunity in terms of skirting the constitution. the government meets that. it is helpful to them. in your book you also talk about some of the surveillance of journalists and lawyers that only by the government, but private-sector. you highlight the case of hewlett-packard and what it did in 2006 in terms of finding out the sources of journalists. can you talk about that? it was called the hp scandal. hewlett-packard hired a private contractor, i believe two, to do what is called pretext thing, which is now illegal in many areas. basically the pretended or someone else, called up record keeping places to find out information about the people who beat criticism of hp. we see a lot of that. private security bleeped to journalists. exactly. administration, we have the classifying of more information, declassifying fewer documents, and cracking down on journalists, which goes to the heart of our democracy without the free exchange of information we become a very repressive state. reported earlier today that max kelly, the former chief security officer for facebook went on to work or since 2010 has been working for the nsa. close partnership. let s talk about the main thesis of your book, spying on democracy: government surveillance, corporate power and public r resistance. activists?s to give us an example would a means for the future. when people say during the revelations of nsa spying, i don t need to worry because of nothing to hide, it goes to the critical question of, what does the government do with this information? one thing they do is target individuals who challenge not only government policies, but corporate policies. animal rights activists, environmental activists. the danger of even getting metadata we contract associations and patterns that people engaged in, those were critical of the government will be sought out even criminalize for engaging in robust speech. we see new legislation such as the animal enterprise terrorism of it takes away a lot first, met protected activities. first and in a protected activities. are seeing, the use of biometrics. people arrested in occupy new york city were asked if they would submit to iris scans. we re also seeing that were held longer when they said no, but if you go to a hospital, for example, the man asked to put your palm under a scanner. there will say this for expediency, you can see the doctor faster. you re giving up personal affirmation that is stored. i think it is important to realize all of the information gathered electronically or through biometrics is stored and to be accessed and used for purposes other than what it was a richly intended for at a point down the road. i want to ask about the latest gurion report over the nsa and attorney-client communications. this from the new york times, to get their hands of the latest software technology to manipulate and take advantage of large lines of data, u.s. intelligence agencies invested icon valley start-ups the american intelligence committee also has its own in- house venture capital company financed to invest in high-tech start-ups. start with the client attorney privilege. since 9/11 events, we ve seen a few developments that allow the government to listen in on what are supposed to be private, privileged conversations between attorneys and their clients. the problem is, organizations such as the center for constitutional rights, the people s law office in chicago, and the national lawyers guild talk a lot with clients who are critical of the government. the government then has an interest in listening in, monitoring their conversations. it has what we call the chilling effect on free speech. when you know you re being listened in on, it alters the way you re going to communicate with your attorney. just as a confidential source talking to a journalist once suspecting they re being monitored, may not be able to speak as freely. i think by going after attorneys and their clients as well as journalists, it further constricts the exercise of free speech and really goes at the core of our legal system and protection of the rights of anyone, no matter how unpopular to the government, have a zealous advocate on their behalf. in border of drones enforcement across the country, the southern border especially, it is increasingly being done. the civil liberties concerns there? it is being done and border control and emergencies such as floods, fires, situations where they claim it is too dangerous to have a personed aircraft fly over. it i think the argument that it is safer, less costly, is something that is going to allow more and more of these functions to be increasingly taken over. the faa has said drones our right they said should be used increasingly for law-enforcement purposes. back to the question of the beginning of a corporation, government convergence on spying, most people talk about the government, whether there will be looking at them, but the idea this is used for corporations to spy as well? corporations are such a huge part of our life and are developing their own intelligence branches as well as giving information over to the government. they need to silence their critics quickly and efficiently. we have seen them during the spying on peta, a coalition of democracy workers in florida workers in florida. they actually monitored burger king in florida. we want to take you very much, heidi boghosian, executive director of the national lawyers guild. she is the co-host of the weekly civil liberties radio show law and disorder. shias author the forthcoming book, spying on democracy: government surveillance, corporate power and public resistance. it is due out in august. when we come back, we remember james gandolfini with two filmmakers who did two documentary s with them around war. stay with us. [music break] this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i m amy goodman with juan gonzalez. we remember james gandolfini. we end today s show with a look at a lesser-known side of a well-known actor james gandolfini, celebrated for his role as mob boss tony soprano on the hit tv series, the sopranos, died wednesday the age of 51. he was vacationing with his family in italy when he died of a possible heart attack. the coverage of his death has focused mainly on his trail as tony soprano, a role that earned him three emmy awards. in a statement, david chase called james gandolfini one of the greatest actors of this or any time. but the news coverage has mentioned little about the more political side of james gandolfini s work. in new york city he was beloved but only because of his acting on the stage and screen, but his major support for community media. and while his fictional roles have received wide acclaim, he has received less attention for his leading roles in two documentaries about the ravages of war on u.s. soldiers. in 2010 he produced the hbo film, wartorn: 1861-2010 about posttraumatic stress disorder from the civil war to iraq and afghanistan. he also conducted a series of in-depth interviews with u.s. soldiers wounded in the iraq war for 2007 hbo film called, alive day memories: home from iraq. the at thenters on of the soldiers remember two key dates in their lives their birthday and they re alive day, the day when they narrowly escaped a violent death. this is the trailer for the film. jim gandolfini. how you doing, sir? what did you join the army? i wanted to protect the nation and protect it and punish those who seek to destroy it. it was one of those nights in the desert. i had my left hand on the steering wheel. i was smoking and the bomb went off. all i heard was screaming and everything went black. that was the trailer for the hbo film, alive day memories: home from iraq. for more we re joined here in new york by the film s co- director is, jon alpert and matthew o neil. the also corrected, wartorn: 1861-2010. they were together in new york s downtown community television, a community media center based in chinatown where james gandolfini was a board member. you were nominated for an oscar for redemption. honorsceived many including in the awards. we welcome you both back to democracy now! jamesalk about gandolfini. he was a friend of yours, and he did your films. he was a friend to many people. could crystallize him, he sort of believed in nobody left behind. he did not leave his high school friends behind or his college friends behind or soldiers. he did not leave people with learning disabilities behind. he did not leave me behind. any time he came to town, my phone would ring. used toy now! and dtcv be neighbors. we consider each other friends, but we don t call each other up. gym s world was really big. he made sure he never forgot anyone. when you re his friend, you were always his friend. how to get about with dctv to begin with? the commercial acting world is somewhat removed from documentaries and community media. through working on the documentary s, we all showed a soldiers, thee cost of war. he worked really hard on those documentaries. the interesting thing about documentaries, in essence, they show war and all its terror. they are antiwar films. the army has embraced these films and shows him to every single soldier that comes into the army. it was a constructive series of documentaries. and what our high school kids all cameras this christmas so they could tell their stories. i want to go to one of jim gandolfini s interviews in alive day memories: home from iraq. when i came back, a lot of people would ask me, how do you feel about this? do you ever think you get married, have a boyfriend, have kids? i did not know the answers to those questions, but as i go through life, i am learning it has nothing to do with whether or not i am in npt. an amputee. if i ever have a kid, do i wonder if there will love me for who i am? i hope so. what were you just thinking about? will i be aty is, raise a kid? i want it to pick up my son or daughter with two arms. i want. i hope they still love me. i hope i will still be a good parent. what can you do. if it matters, i think you re going to be a wonderful parent. that is james gandolfini speaking with first lt. dawn . whaten he asks her, rethinking? there is a long pause. it is an example of his love for people. he listened carefully. theaid attention to what rich talking about. he treated everyone with respect and warmth. the political side of jim, i was thinking about these interviews. he was not traditional political, but you want people to hear the stories he had heard. he was inspired by what they said. he was inspired by the fact he had never heard the stories before. he did uso tours and came back and said, why is no one talking about these soldiers lives? how can i help tell the stories. he one of the cameras focused in the spotlight focused on other people. how little he felt the need to be seen in the film s or even to raise long questions of the film. i remember when we were doing press for the film and los angeles and the press would be saying, james, james, mr. gandolfini! he would grab a soldier in say, don t talk to me, it is about them rid i got nothing to say. he led his energy and his warmth and compassion to the stories that were not being heard. it was a real gift ever 1. let s go to a clip from the hbo documentary, wartorn: 1861- 2010 of james gandolfini interviewing two members of the louisiana national guard at camps where in iraq. it is hard to be tossed to do what we do. it is combat arms, then they expect to turn it off. that is a hard thing about being in the guard. they expect to does to get back into society. who is a? friends, family. in early april 2006 i really hit rock bottom. i contemplated suicide for a while. it got to a point where i did not know where it was what it was. mentally i did not know where i was proud i was lost. i felt i was feeling my way with my hands in the dark. it is like he just cannot give yourself right. talking to other people that, nothing helps? you just cannot figure in yourself out. it will tear your life apart. met a bottleer has because they did not know to do. the wartorn: 1861-2010 documentary and the boys in the distance is james gandolfini. war-torn and the voice in the distance was james gandolfini. people are ready to talk and share intimate things with him and that was an extraordinary gift he brought to these documentaries. and his involvement with downtown community television? as a board member, was the frequently in the firehouse? he came by whenever he was in town. he continued to work in documentary s. he stayed involved in our lives the same one he did with the soldiers lives. he gave these men and women his cellphone. he was a super big movie star and they stayed in touch with him for years because he made that intimate connection and kept up with it. last comment, jon alpert? a we are in the middle of documentary that he was producing about people with learning disabilities. it is another cause he felt very strongly about. the kids who were pushed into the back of that classroom, it was not right. no one left behind. he knew if they have the right opportunities they could blossom read he wanted everyone in the country to think about that. i would like the democracy now! committee to also think about j not thinkim, but saul. he is a really good guy. and all the best to saul. you can go to democracynow.org to see our interviews with saul landau who is battling cancer right now. thank you both for being with us and all of the work you do, jon alpert and matthew o neil who co directed, wartorn: 1861- 2010 and alive day memories: home from iraq. by james both produced gandolfini. that does it for our show. a very fond farewell to our video production fellow nemo allen. thank you for your persistence, your dedication and wish to the very best in your journey to colombia and beyond. you will always be with us. democracy now! is looking for feedback from people who appreciate the closed captioning. e-mail your comments to outreach@democracynow.org or mail them to democracy now! p.o. box 693 new york, new york 10013. [captioning made possible by democracy now!]
james comey to head the fbi, newly disclosed documents reveal the fbi has cleared its agents in every single shooting incident dating back two decades. we will speak to pulitzer prize- winning new york times reporter charlie savage. then drones over the united states. does the fbi use drones for surveillance on u.s. soil? yes. as outgoing fbi director robert mueller confirms the agency s use of drones, we will speak with heidi boghosian, author of the new book, spying on democracy: government surveillance, corporate power and public resistance. and we remember the late actor james gandolfini. while best known for his role is to a soprano, he produced two documentaries focused on injured military veterans, the effects of ptsd, and the emotional cost of war. sure they give the metals and alive, butou you are you feel and the. you feel like he lost. like you lost. thank you. no, man, thank you. we will speak with the filmmakers who worked with james gandolfini on the documentaries, jon alpert and matthew o neil. all that and more coming up. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i m amy goodman. or disclosures have emerged from the leaked surveillance operations of the nsa. documents published by the guardian thursday show the nsa can retain the personal information of americans even if collected without a warrant. under rules adopted by the form intelligence surveillance court, americans emails and phone records can be helped if inadvertently seized in the process of monitoring a foreigner or containing significant intelligence or evidence of crimes. the guidelines show the nsa generally destroys information in a berkeley gathered on u.s. citizens unless the information is encrypted. in those cases, the data is retained help kraft encryption more broadly. encryption uc davis nossel is the targeting by the nsa if it is deemed to resemble methods by a foreign power or territory. the nsa has communications between attorneys and clients were they were under criminal indictment. portions lead to a massacre would be singled out. in a statement, the aclu said the revelations new details have emerged meanwhile on ties between u.s. intelligence and the nation s largest technology firms. the new york times reports the online communications giant skype created a secret program to develop ways of providing the government with easy access to customers information. dubbed project chess, the program was established to navigate the legal and technical obstacles to enabling government monitoring of skype calls and chats. the new york times has also revealed the former chief security officer for facebook has been working for the national security agency since leaving facebook in 2010. speculation continues to grow over whether nsa whistleblower edward snowden will seek political asylum in iceland. wikileaks founder julian assange says his been in touch with snowden s legal team. on thursday, an icelandic businessman tied to wikileaks said he is ready to approve a plan to fly snowden from china should the government grant him asylum. federal officials have confirmed they ve been investigating for more than the year the profit from that conducted snowden s background check. the company is the largest contractor vetting security clearances for the u.s. government. it is report al-libi reportedly being scrutinized for systematic failure to properly vet employees. the house has defeated the $500 billion farm bill that would have imposed radical cuts to food stamps for low-income americans. the measure called for $20 billion in cuts to the food stamps program over the next decade. nearly 2 million people would have lost access to food stamps, and 200,000 children would have been denied school lunches. republicans also passed an amount that would have allowed states to impose work requirements of the stamp recipients. former lee, herself a food stamp recipient, denounced what she called a further attack on poor families. i know from personal experience and no one wants to be on food stamps. many are hard-working people making minimum wage and others are desperately looking for a job in these difficult economic times. this and it demands hungry families search for a job even while it eliminates all employment assistance and job training funds for those very families. let s not pretend i m making a family supper more hunger and desperation and more hardship that a job will suddenly appear for them. although the work requirement amendment passed, 62 republicans ultimately helped democrats defeat the overall legislation because they wanted even deeper cuts. after the vote, nancy pelosi mocked republicans, calling their handling of the farm bill demonstration of major amateur hour. a group of republican senators has unveiled a measure that would radically expand border enforcement in order to win support within their party for immigration reform. the proposal would double the number of border guards to 40,000. it would also fund the completion of 700 miles of fencing and surveillance. in a statement, the aclu criticized proposals saying the senate move comes as the immigration bill faces uncertainty in the house, where speaker john boehner says he won t allow a vote unless it enjoys a majority of republican support. an estimated 1 million people rallied across brazil on thursday in a historic escalation of the country s largest protest in two decades. the demonstrations were held more than 80 cities across brazil, one day after the cities of sao paulo and rio de janeiro revoked transit fare hikes that set off the initial transitions demonstrations, but have since grown into a movement against government corruption, inequality, failing public services, police brutality, and government spending on the 2014 world cup and the 2016 summer olympics. thursday s protests aren t concluded an estimated 300,000 in rio, over 100 and thousands of paulo, and tens of thousands in the capital. at least 150 people are dead following massive flash floods in northern india. rains and landslides have left 50,000 hindu pilgrims trapped in a mountainous state. more than 33,000 have been rescued. and report from the world bank is warning a global temperature rise of two degrees celsius will trap millions of people in poverty and devastation in the coming decades. they said unless global warming can be slowed, rising to butchers will wreak havoc on poor communities and som. the earth will have fundamentally changed. the way the earth processes water will have changed, so we will have droughts that will be devastating. we will have floods that will put cities in danger. there will be fundamental issues and around the ability of poor people to sustain itself. the thing i worry most about is 2 degrees celsius world will prevent us from lifting people out of poverty. our goal of ending poverty by 2013 will be out of reach. a new study is warning that women worldwide more than one-third of women worldwide are victimized by sexual or physical assault from a partner. for the first time brings together the data on the prevalence of different forms of violence against women, and shows the problem is widespread and excessively high. one in three women globally are affected by physical or sexual violence from a partner or non partner. of violence against women is a global problem. it is widespread at unacceptably high levels. according to the study, 40% of women killed worldwide were slain by a partner. details on u.s. drone strike in yemen, mcclatchy reports in addition to killing five militants, the strike killed the lead targets ever brother, a 10- year-old boy. the attack occurred june 9, just weeks after president obama is a dress promising greater transparency and caution in the waging of drone strikes abroad. it set off a wave of complaints from local tribal leaders. one told mcclatchy the pentagon says calls for military doctors to stop the force feeding of hunger striking guantanamo prisoners have fallen on deaf ears. a group of top doctors and specialists recently published an open plea for their colleagues in the military to boycott the first reading of prisoners force feeding the prisoners. is spokesperson said military doctors have rejected the concerns. this is a lawful order. ourink i spoke to medical folks this morning on that very issue and he said we that hasd anyone voiced any concern, so the american medical association it is their opinion, but the law and policy is to preserve life through lawful means. 104 of the 166 remaining prisoners are on strike, but the defense attorney said the number is higher. at least 44 are being force fed through tubes. jury selection has concluded in a murder trial of george tianemazimmerman. zimmerman will face a six member, all female panel, five of them white. he faces up to life in prison. the fbi is denying rumors it is investigating the late journalist michael hastings before his death in a los angeles car crash earlier this week. wikileaks said one of its attorneys had heard directly from hastings he was under fbi investigation. in a statement on thursday, the bureau responded christian group devoted to so-called gate conversion has closed its doors and apologized to the lgbt community. exodus international had billed itself as the oldest christian ministry devoted to the practice of trying to shame gay people in a changing the sexual orientation. in an open letter to those who underwent its practices, but to this international president alan chambers of the group was part of a system of ignorance saying california last year became the first detonation banning so- called conversion therapy aimed at minors. two philadelphia public school parents and two workers have launched a hunger strike against a wave of school closures and staff layoffs. the philadelphia school district announced earlier this month the firing of 1200 employees lunchtimes aides responsible for safety and serving food to students. they are among 3800 school workers to stand lose their jobs next month in the city s bid to close at $300 million funding gap. philadelphia is also closing 23 public schools. the hunger strikers are camping out of from the pennsylvania governor s field office in downtown philadelphia during the day and sleeping in a nearby church at night. in chicago, the school year ended this year with a sit-in at one of the 49 schools being closed down under a plan approved earlier this year. and those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i m amy goodman with juan gonzalez. welcome to all our listeners and viewers from around the country and around the world. as president obama prepares to nominate james comey today to head the fbi, the agency is facing new questions over how it handles shootings involving fbi agents. a new look at the fbi s internal destinations has found the bureau has cleared its agents in every single shooting incident dating back two decades. according to the new york times, from 1993 until today, the fbi shootings were deemed justified in the fatal shootings of 70 people and wounding of 80 others. out of 289 shootings that are found to be deliberate, no agent was disciplined except for letters of censure in five cases. even in the case for the bureau paid a shooting victim over $1 million to settle a lawsuit, the internal review did not find the agent who shot the man culpable. the issue of fbi accountability has recently re- emerged following last month s fatal shooting of ibragim interrogatedwas over his ties to one of the suspects in the boston marathon bombing. the washington post and several tv news organizations reported he was unarmed, citing unnamed law enforcement officials. on thursday, i spoke to pulitzer prize-winning journalist charlie savage, the washington correspondent for the new york times. he co-wrote the recent article called, the fbi deemed agents faultless in 150 shootings. charlieby asking savaged to lay out what he found. before this recent shooting incident in orlando, which remains murky, he said the fbi is committed he was not armed. another version is, he attacked an agent with a knife. another says he was brandishing a pole. who knows what happens in that room happened in that room. before that i ve been looking into fbi shooting incidents over many years. we fought a freedom of information act lawsuit to obtain the internal records at fbi shooting reviews, every time they should pull a trigger they have a review. for all of the deliberate shootings dating back to 1993. suddenly, timely, because the fbi just shot this man under very murky circumstances, and typically is the case when the fbi kill someone or shoot someone, local homicide conducting an not independent investigation to try to figure out what happened. they defer to the federal bureau of investigation to investigate itself. what this enormous pile of documents that we eventually obtained, all delivered shooting incidents dating back to 1993, shows come in every instance and fbi 20 year span, where an bullet hit someone, it either killed or wounded them, that was deliberately fired, the agency cleared the agent of any wrongdoing. they found it was a justified shoot, a good shoot. there were five supposed what it would call bad shoes were agents received a letter of censure for things like firing a warning shot up a crowd. none of those involved anyone getting hit by a bullet. you quote professor samuel walker who teaches criminal justice about the problem. this is a professor who studies in eternal law enforcement investigations. he said this very low rate of finding shoes basically zero when someone was hurt, or an animal some of these are shooting dogs while serving an arrest warrant for something was suspiciously low. of course we don t know it means that in fact something was wrong, it is just suspiciously low. one of the problems in the value waiting this documents that, containing over 2000 pages, as i said earlier, overwhelmingly often with few exceptions, no independently produced investigative report by some other authority where you could put the two report side by side and see if this is an accurate portrayal of what happened are not. there s good reason to believe the fbi would have a generally lower rate of bad shootings because unlike a city police force, the fbi agents tend to be older, better trained, more experienced, and perhaps most importantly, they re not patrolling the streets and responding to in progress crimes and chaotic situations. when they go in arresting people and so forth, it tends to be preplanned operations where they go in with overwhelming force and that will minimize chaos. yes, they still killed or wounded 150 people over 20 years and is kind of remarkable not once in all of that time, even in an instant or the bureau ended up paying over $1 million to someone who was shot by an agent, did they find internally that that was not a justified shooting. charlie savage, you referred to this piece, the summit of $1 million of a man shot in 2002. can you describe that case? let me preface it by saying why this is a case were looking at. it is not the case is particularly different than others, although there are some oddities about it, and it is over a decade old, but what is interesting is it is rare exception to the rule there is nothing to look at the the fbi s own narrative of what at. in this case there was an independent investigation by a local police detective and there was a lawsuit that led to the discovery before it was finally settled and there was some additional investigations that were conducted as part of that litigation. so there was a lot of alternative information alongside the fbi s own version of events to see at least whether they dovetailed or there were some discrepancies. and there were discrepancies. the fbi was looking for a bank robbery suspect they thought was when becoming by convenience store in a white baseball cap, and a car driven by his sister. unfortunately, another man fitting that description who was innocent came back in a white baseball cap and a car driven by his girlfriend. the fbi thought it was the bank robbery suspect and chased down the car, swarmed it, surrounded it with guns. a moment later, shot mr. shultz in the face. miraculously, he survived. the bullet deflected off a piece of metal on the clip that holds the seat belt so it s sort of hit his jaw rather than his head. he underwent facial reconstruction surgery and the fbi eventually paid or should say taxpayers paid $1.3 million to settle that lawsuit. and yet internally, the fbi deemed it to have been a good shoe. the internal report shows one member of the panel looking at this did not think so, but he was outvoted by the rest of them who said the totality of circumstances around the the tally of the circumstances says it was understandable. you see a series of small but important ways the narrative omitted information or exaggerated information in a way that made it much more sympathetic to the agent who pulled the trigger and these alternative reports, including one by this police detective who is a neutral party, look like. the fbi since spent a full page describing what happened after they turned on lights and sirens until they finally pulled over the car. then make it sound like an extended chase. they talk about how the car rapidly accelerated. how the fbi agents had to shout over and over for them to pull over and finally brought it to rest, maybe 100 yards away, approximately. when you look at the alternative reports, first of all, a forensic crash reconstruction specialist said the car could of been going no more than 12 miles an hour. the police detective noted it was in a merge lane so it wouldn t have to accelerate a little bit. an internal sketch creed by the fbi but not in this report, put it stopped at 142 feet from the intersection, not 100 yards. so the fbi s report created the sense of quite a chase that would have made it more reasonable to assume the person in the car was a desperate and dangerous person. another example is the fbi s report that was sent to this review group did not contain anything from the statement by the victim and it did not live at a crucial fact was in dispute. the crucial fact was, how did this i move before the agent shot him? in the fbi s report, is says the agent who shot him said, show me your hands. in fact to move down to his left, so he thought was reaching for a gun and shot him. the victims said, he had been moving to the right because another agent was simultaneously shot and open the door. he was listening to that agents. we don t know what is true, but the fact that there are disputed facts is relevant and that was not put in the fbi s narrative. it only came out because of the internal external investigation. joseph schultz said he was responding to another officer telling him to open the door? that is right. he said was reaching to his right to open the door as opposed to the agent who shot him in who said he saw him reach into the left. we don t know which of those accounts is true, but the relevant issue is, the fbi s internal review panel that deemed as a good shoe did not have that information in front of them in the near the produced by the review team but this is more than a decade ago. it is one incident rid it is not novel to me at this stage whether this is in aberration or a this is something to happen more often. the overwhelming majority at the time, there is no alternative investigation or loss to thicket s dismissed right away by a judge and a motion for summary judgment without reaching the stage of discovery and having evidence collected. most of the time people being shot our criminal suspects, the people the drug dealer or whoever thought was going to go and be arrested, so there is not a lot of public sympathy, i think, or interest in the judiciary in looking at those cases. the oddity of this one particular case were was a totally innocent victim overcame those hurdles and convinced the police department they wanted to do their own investigation and convince the judge and the court to let it get to discovery, and that is how we know in this case something was audit. charlie savage, you said you got over 2100 pages from the fbi. did you uncover any information about the killing of the 72- year-old puerto rican independent activist shot dead by the fbi in 2005, and according to an autopsy, he bled to death after being hit with a single bullet? officials did not enter his home until the following day, many hours after he was shot. he was wanted in a 1983 bank heist. i did not look carefully at that case and i m not sure if it is in the section of documents or not. i put them all up on the web. i invite viewers to know anything about particular incidence is back in 1983, to go back and look at that. ofre are a handful incidents that did not go through this process. the justice department or inspector general, rather, has the right to take away a shooting incident investigation from the fbi at the onset. there was one from puerto rico, i don t know if it is the one that involved a police officer who shot from about five or six years ago, that was not in the documents that because the jd we did a search of the documents you put on line, and this is not in that 2100 pages. because they pulled it out. that was charlie savage, washington correspondent for the new york times who covered the recent article headlined, the fbi deemed agents faultless in 150 shootings. we will have a link to it on democracynow.org. when we come back, drones over the united states. stay with us. [music break] this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i m amy goodman with juan gonzalez. we turn now to other fbi news, the agency acknowledged the use of drones to carry out surveillance within the u.s. on wednesday, and the questioning by republican senator chuck grassley june hearing at the senate judiciary committee, fbi director robert mueller confirmed the domestic use of drones. he also said the bureau was still drafting regulations to address privacy concerns. we are in the initial stages of doing that and i will tell you our footprint is very small. we are exploring not only the use, but also the necessary guidelines for that use. does the fbi use drones for surveillance on u.s. soil? yes. i want to go onto a question let me put it in context. the very, very minimal way and very seldom. in a statement, democratic senator mark udall questioned whether drone spying is constitutional, saying meanwhile in the latest leak of classified nsa material, the guardian reported thursday the nsa can keep copies of intercepted communications from or about u.s. citizens if the material contains significant intelligence or evidence of crimes. the foreign intelligence surveillance court or fisa court signed off on rules that appear to grant wide latitude to the nsa in making use of data, rather than minimizing its usage, according to the report. to talk about the issue of domestic surveillance, we re joined by heidi boghosian, whose new book examines increasing monitoring of ordinary citizens, and the corporations that work with the government to mine data collected from a wide range of electronic sources. she is executive director of the national lawyers guild. her forthcoming book is called, spying on democracy: government surveillance, corporate power and public resistance. in august.ut welcome. let s talk about drones over the united states, how they re used. both conservatives and liberals have been claiming for years that drone use in the united states is [indiscernible] the reason is, they can be made in any size. researchers are looking into how butterflies move so that they could craft drones the size of mosquitoes or birds. they have the ability to have infrared cameras on them, heat sensors, and also the ability to stay airborne they call it loitering for long periods of time reid contractors such as boeing and raytheon are looking into ways to keep them airborne longer. the danger of being with small drones, they can pass in dense urban areas such as new york city into an apartment building, stay there and conduct surveillance. even now drones have the capacity to have heat sensors to determine, i think through a 1 foot concrete wall, if people are moving around inside. so diffuse what a mosquito, you could be charged with damaging government property? arguese defending drones it is no different than a helicopter flying over a scene, that there is no real civil liberties issue, unless of course they come into apartments. they say it is not much different than the technology. it is very different. drones do not require a space from which to depart the way manned vehicles do. furthermore, technology has not kept abreast with developments in the law. as was cited earlier, the regulations are really lagging behind safeguards about how they can be used. there is a rush right now by military contractors and law enforcement agencies around the country to tell the faa how they can integrate drones into domestic aerospace in the next two years. billions of dollars have been given to contractors for that purpose. nyc mayor michael bloomberg, march said the use of domestic surveillance drones by new york city authorities and the erosion of privacy, he talks about this. worldng into a different and charge it and like it or not, what people can do or what governments can do is different and to some extent you can control the cannot keep the tides from coming in. we are quick to have more visibility and less privacy we re going to have more visibility and less privacy. it is not a question of it is good or bad, but i don t see how you can stop it. it benefits large corporations to have a snug .elationship .e have privacy it is small aircraft were able to monitor is over long periods of time, track bar associations, trap us, that presents a huge problem. this whole issue of corporations and government cooperating on surveillance, you talk about that in your book drones not just book, other surveillance in general. you talk about fusion centers. what are those? they were created around 2003 to 2007 as a better way to coordinate intelligence across the country. the problem is a partner with the private sector, the business industry, so they share intelligence with one another. it is obvious to businesses best interest to increase the amount of data they can because there also improving analytics for the government to avail themselves of an order to make sense of the vast amounts of data that is being collected. so technologies being developed that the government relies on. big money is pouring into corporations. in exchange, a private sector is giving that information to the government. but could a former nsa cia director chart michael hayden who oversaw much of the privatization from 1999 to 2005. this is from 2011. we may come to a point where defense is more actively and aggressively defined even for the private sector. what is permitted there is something we would never let the private sector do in physical space. throw out a bumper sticker. how about a digital blackwater? we have privatized certain defense activities even in physical space, and now you have a new domain in which we don t have any paths trampled down in the forest in terms of what it is expected government or allow the government to do. in the past in history when that has happened, the private sector expands to fill the empty space. i am not quite an advocate for that. but these are the kinds of things that will be put into play here very quickly. that was the former nsa and say director general michael hayden, talking about digital blackwater. mcconnell is not top guy. is now top guy. a lot of government agencies hire people from the public sector and vice versa. defcon, the hacker convention every year, you ll see a lot of government officials there. they rely on individuals with technological expertise. they really need each other. i think one of the dangers is private sector can operate with impunity in terms of skirting the constitution. the government meets that. it is helpful to them. in your book you also talk about some of the surveillance of journalists and lawyers that only by the government, but private-sector. you highlight the case of hewlett-packard and what it did in 2006 in terms of finding out the sources of journalists. can you talk about that? it was called the hp scandal. hewlett-packard hired a private contractor, i believe two, to do what is called pretext thing, which is now illegal in many areas. basically the pretended or someone else, called up record keeping places to find out information about the people who beat criticism of hp. we see a lot of that. private security bleeped to journalists. exactly. administration, we have the classifying of more information, declassifying fewer documents, and cracking down on journalists, which goes to the heart of our democracy without the free exchange of information we become a very repressive state. reported earlier today that max kelly, the former chief security officer for facebook went on to work or since 2010 has been working for the nsa. close partnership. let s talk about the main thesis of your book, spying on democracy: government surveillance, corporate power and public resistance. activists?s to give us an example would a means for the future. when people say during the revelations of nsa spying, i don t need to worry because of nothing to hide, it goes to the critical question of, what does the government do with this information? one thing they do is target individuals who challenge not only government policies, but corporate policies. animal rights activists, environmental activists. the danger of even getting metadata we contract associations and patterns that people engaged in, those were critical of the government will be sought out even criminalize for engaging in robust speech. we see new legislation such as the animal enterprise terrorism of it takes away a lot first, met protected activities. first and in a protected activities. are seeing, the use of biometrics. people arrested in occupy new york city were asked if they would submit to iris scans. we re also seeing that were held longer when they said no, but if you go to a hospital, for example, the man asked to put your palm under a scanner. there will say this for expediency, you can see the doctor faster. you re giving up personal affirmation that is stored. i think it is important to realize all of the information gathered electronically or through biometrics is stored and to be accessed and used for purposes other than what it was a richly intended for at a point down the road. i want to ask about the latest gurion report over the nsa and attorney-client communications. this from the new york times, to get their hands of the latest software technology to manipulate and take advantage of large lines of data, u.s. intelligence agencies invested icon valley start-ups the american intelligence committee also has its own in- house venture capital company financed to invest in high-tech start-ups. start with the client attorney privilege. since 9/11 events, we ve seen a few developments that allow the government to listen in on what are supposed to be private, privileged conversations between attorneys and their clients. the problem is, organizations such as the center for constitutional rights, the people s law office in chicago, and the national lawyers guild talk a lot with clients who are critical of the government. the government then has an interest in listening in, monitoring their conversations. it has what we call the chilling effect on free speech. when you know you re being listened in on, it alters the way you re going to communicate with your attorney. just as a confidential source talking to a journalist once suspecting they re being monitored, may not be able to speak as freely. i think by going after attorneys and their clients as well as journalists, it further constricts the exercise of free speech and really goes at the core of our legal system and protection of the rights of anyone, no matter how unpopular to the government, have a zealous advocate on their behalf. in border of drones enforcement across the country, the southern border especially, it is increasingly being done. the civil liberties concerns there? it is being done and border control and emergencies such as floods, fires, situations where they claim it is too dangerous to have a personed aircraft fly over. it i think the argument that it is safer, less costly, is something that is going to allow more and more of these functions to be increasingly taken over. the faa has said drones our right they said should be used increasingly for law-enforcement purposes. back to the question of the beginning of a corporation, government convergence on spying, most people talk about the government, whether there will be looking at them, but the idea this is used for corporations to spy as well? corporations are such a huge part of our life and are developing their own intelligence branches as well as giving information over to the government. they need to silence their critics quickly and efficiently. we have seen them during the spying on peta, a coalition of democracy workers in florida workers in florida. they actually monitored burger king in florida. we want to take you very much, heidi boghosian, executive director of the national lawyers guild. she is the co-host of the weekly civil liberties radio show law and disorder. shias author the forthcoming book, spying on democracy: government surveillance, corporate power and public resistance. it is due out in august. when we come back, we remember james gandolfini with two filmmakers who did two documentary s with them around war. stay with us. [music break] this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i m amy goodman with juan gonzalez. we remember james gandolfini. we end today s show with a look at a lesser-known side of a well-known actor james gandolfini, celebrated for his role as mob boss tony soprano on the hit tv series, the sopranos, died wednesday the age of 51. he was vacationing with his family in italy when he died of a possible heart attack. the coverage of his death has focused mainly on his trail as tony soprano, a role that earned him three emmy awards. in a statement, david chase called james gandolfini one of the greatest actors of this or any time. but the news coverage has mentioned little about the more political side of james gandolfini s work. in new york city he was beloved but only because of his acting on the stage and screen, but his major support for community media. and while his fictional roles have received wide acclaim, he has received less attention for his leading roles in two documentaries about the ravages of war on u.s. soldiers. in 2010 he produced the hbo film, wartorn: 1861-2010 about posttraumatic stress disorder from the civil war to iraq and afghanistan. he also conducted a series of in-depth interviews with u.s. soldiers wounded in the iraq war for 2007 hbo film called, alive day memories: home from iraq. the at thenters on of the soldiers remember two key dates in their lives their birthday and they re alive day, the day when they narrowly escaped a violent death. this is the trailer for the film. jim gandolfini. how you doing, sir? what did you join the army? i wanted to protect the nation and protect it and punish those who seek to destroy it. it was one of those nights in the desert. i had my left hand on the steering wheel. i was smoking and the bomb went off. all i heard was screaming and everything went black. that was the trailer for the hbo film, alive day memories: home from iraq. for more we re joined here in new york by the film s co- director is, jon alpert and matthew o neil. the also corrected, wartorn: 1861-2010. they were together in new york s downtown community television, a community media center based in chinatown where james gandolfini was a board member. you were nominated for an oscar for redemption. honorsceived many including in the awards. we welcome you both back to democracy now! jamesalk about gandolfini. he was a friend of yours, and he did your films. he was a friend to many people. could crystallize him, he sort of believed in nobody left behind. he did not leave his high school friends behind or his college friends behind or soldiers. he did not leave people with learning disabilities behind. he did not leave me behind. any time he came to town, my phone would ring. used toy now! and dtcv be neighbors. we consider each other friends, but we don t call each other up. gym s world was really big. he made sure he never forgot anyone. when you re his friend, you were always his friend. how to get about with dctv to begin with? the commercial acting world is somewhat removed from documentaries and community media. through working on the documentary s, we all showed a soldiers, thee cost of war. he worked really hard on those documentaries. the interesting thing about documentaries, in essence, they show war and all its terror. they are antiwar films. the army has embraced these films and shows him to every single soldier that comes into the army. it was a constructive series of documentaries. and what our high school kids all cameras this christmas so they could tell their stories. i want to go to one of jim gandolfini s interviews in alive day memories: home from iraq. when i came back, a lot of people would ask me, how do you feel about this? do you ever think you get married, have a boyfriend, have kids? i did not know the answers to those questions, but as i go through life, i am learning it has nothing to do with whether or not i am in npt. an amputee. if i ever have a kid, do i wonder if there will love me for who i am? i hope so. what were you just thinking about? will i be aty is, raise a kid? i want it to pick up my son or daughter with two arms. i want. i hope they still love me. i hope i will still be a good parent. what can you do. if it matters, i think you re going to be a wonderful parent. that is james gandolfini speaking with first lt. dawn . whaten he asks her, rethinking? there is a long pause. it is an example of his love for people. he listened carefully. theaid attention to what rich talking about. he treated everyone with respect and warmth. the political side of jim, i was thinking about these interviews. he was not traditional political, but you want people to hear the stories he had heard. he was inspired by what they said. he was inspired by the fact he had never heard the stories before. he did uso tours and came back and said, why is no one talking about these soldiers lives? how can i help tell the stories. he one of the cameras focused in the spotlight focused on other people. how little he felt the need to be seen in the film s or even to raise long questions of the film. i remember when we were doing press for the film and los angeles and the press would be saying, james, james, mr. gandolfini! he would grab a soldier in say, don t talk to me, it is about them rid i got nothing to say. he led his energy and his warmth and compassion to the stories that were not being heard. it was a real gift ever 1. let s go to a clip from the hbo documentary, wartorn: 1861- 2010 of james gandolfini interviewing two members of the louisiana national guard at camps where in iraq. it is hard to be tossed to do what we do. it is combat arms, then they expect to turn it off. that is a hard thing about being in the guard. they expect to does to get back into society. who is a? friends, family. in early april 2006 i really hit rock bottom. i contemplated suicide for a while. it got to a point where i did not know where it was what it was. mentally i did not know where i was proud i was lost. i felt i was feeling my way with my hands in the dark. it is like he just cannot give yourself right. talking to other people that, nothing helps? you just cannot figure in yourself out. it will tear your life apart. met a bottleer has because they did not know to do. the wartorn: 1861-2010 documentary and the boys in the distance is james gandolfini. war-torn and the voice in the distance was james gandolfini. people are ready to talk and share intimate things with him and that was an extraordinary gift he brought to these documentaries. and his involvement with downtown community television? as a board member, was the frequently in the firehouse? he came by whenever he was in town. he continued to work in documentary s. he stayed involved in our lives the same one he did with the soldiers lives. he gave these men and women his cellphone. he was a super big movie star and they stayed in touch with him for years because he made that intimate connection and kept up with it. last comment, jon alpert? a we are in the middle of documentary that he was producing about people with learning disabilities. it is another cause he felt very strongly about. the kids who were pushed into the back of that classroom, it was not right. no one left behind. he knew if they have the right opportunities they could blossom read he wanted everyone in the country to think about that. i would like the democracy now! committee to also think about j not thinkim, but saul. he is a really good guy. and all the best to saul. you can go to democracynow.org to see our interviews with saul landau who is battling cancer right now. thank you both for being with us and all of the work you do, jon alpert and matthew o neil who co directed, wartorn: 1861- 2010 and alive day memories: home from iraq. by james both produced gandolfini. that does it for our show. a very fond farewell to our video production fellow nemo allen. thank you for your persistence, your dedication and wish to the very best in your journey to colombia and beyond. you will always be with us. democracy now! is looking for feedback from people who appreciate the closed captioning. e-mail your comments to outreach@democracynow.org or mail them to democracy now! p.o. box 693 new york, new york 10013. [captioning made possible by democracy now!] the first thing i felt when i arrived in west rj that i arrived in america. you can feel the heart beat right here in small towns of köhler river. it s a feeling i have not felt anywhere before. highway 38 the arteries and veins of our country. you can see the