even though consumer advocates say much more needs to be done, especially, erin, with telemarketing laws. >> pretty amazing because when you -- as i'm watching your report, i was realizing i haven't gotten that auto warranty call in a while so maybe we can all notice that it really is working what they're doing. thanks for that report, gabe. and thanks to all of you. time for anderson. good evening. we are one step closer to knowing what the government's criminal case may be against the former president and we may be closer still because the former judge who signed off on the search warrant signalled his intention to make at least portions public in support of it. he unsealed a number of documents and we'll have details in just a moment. also ahead, what some of the former president's top white house officials make of his claim that he had a standing policy of declassifying documents by default. and there's also new reporting

tonight on why he's been calling for all court papers to be made public but not doing so in the place that it matters most, the courtroom. clarissa ward is in afghanistan and her harrowing return to a place deeply affected by the war and what she found when she got there one year after american troops departed. we begin with the search at mar-a-lago and the fight against unce unsealing documents. jessica, walk us through what the judge ordered today. >> anderson, the judge telling doj to go back to the drawing board and find a way to release some of this information from the affidavit. the judge is telling prosecutors two things. propose redactions but also better explain why they need to keep large sections of this secret. so the judge has set a deadline. he wants their recommendations next thursday at noon. after that point the judge says he might have additional confidential discussions with doj before he makes that final decision about what to release. parts of it are likely to get publicly released but maybe not big portions and certainly not

the juiciest and consequential details. the judge released some general information but we did get some insight into this criminal application. for example, the application for the warrant really better details the potential offenses being investigated. you can see there it says willful retention of national defense information, also concealment or removal of government records and obstruction of a federal investigation. that willful retention is key, because legal experts are telling our evan perez that it's that language that points directly to the former president as a possible subject of the criminal probe. something else that was released was the motion to seal. and it has federal prosecutors expressing their concern that as you can see there, evidence might be destroyed. you know, anderson, that could explain why fbi agents were compelled to move in and spend hours taking 11 sets of

classified documents in the end. >> if you could just explain what the doj's main argument against releasing the affidavit is? >> yeah. they have been arguing this in their papers and also argued it forcefully in court today. they're warning here and saying this to the judge that the release of the affidavit, it's not only going to derail their investigation, which is still ongoing, but more crucially, anderson, they're saying it's going to endanger witnesses and investigators working on this probe. the lead prosecutor today in court talked about how there's very revealing information in the affidavit that would make very clear who is talking to the feds about this. he talked about the fact this has been a volatile situation ever since the mar-a-lago search just about two weeks ago. people have been threatening fbi agents. so he's saying that these witnesses could be in danger if these crucial details in the affidavit come out. so we'll see what the doj proposes next week because at this point, anderson, they have already argued in their papers and in the court proceeding that any redaction that they suggest,

they say would be so extensive that there would be nothing left of substance but the judge here is pushing them to find some way to get some information out to the public. we'll see in maybe just about a week or so. >> jessica schneider, appreciate it. perspective from carrie cordero. also senior fellow at the center for new american security. also with us, former federal judge nancy gertner. judge, was it surprising that a judge in this matter set up the potential release of a redacted affidavit? >> it was very surprising. i think that he must be feeling the pressure from the public to find out what's going on. i'm still not convinced that anything material will be released here. the department of justice is on the horns of a dilemma. i would imagine that this is an affidavit even more exhaustive than most because they knew what the target was and they knew that there would be pushback.

and so now having laid it all out and more in an affidavit to have the risk that everything that they're doing become public is really -- you know, must be very troubling to them. so i'm withholding judgment until i see whether their redre redactions really leave anything of substance for the public to look at. also bear in mind there's an appeal to the judge, this is a magistrate judge's decision and there's an appeal to the judge. so i wouldn't hold my breath about seeing this any time soon. >> carrie, the procedural documents released which list the potential offenses being investigated, willful retention of national defense information, concealment or removal of government records, obstruction of federal investigation, does any of that sharpen the focus on the former president as the possible subject of a criminal probe? >> well, that willful retention piece, that's part of what's known as the espionage statutes,

the statutes where really serious breaches of unauthorized disclosure or retention of classified information are usually prosecuted. because he was the person who had originally authority to retain these documents, but then when he left office and went back home to mar-a-lago, he no longer had authorized access. and then the almost piece, this is one particular provision of those espionage statutes. so i think that points to his role in having had access to the information and then no longer having appropriate lawful access to it and then keeping it and not returning it. >> judge gertner, what do you make of that willful retention of national defense information? >> well, i think you have to step back and look at the timeline. the timeline here was he leaves the white house, stuff is put into boxes. okay, maybe there was an inadvertent putting stuff in boxes that he shouldn't have. then the national archives gets

on the case and he returns 15 boxes. then there is one subpoena, then another subpoena, then there's a visit to mar-a-lago. and now this search. it's very hard under those circumstances to say, whoops, i accidentally slipped in a top secret document. so the intentionality to some degree looks different in august of 2022 than it might have 18 months ago. >> carrie, obviously cnn and other news organizations have been pushing to try to get this affidavit out to the public. i understand their argument, certainly the counterargument that the justice department is making and they laid out today is that letting the public read it would provide a road map to the investigation they said and it would indicate the next steps in the probe. if some of the information is released, if true, that would possibly severely hinder the investigation, woktuldn't it? >> it would.

from my perspective and from what the lawyers are arguing to the court is that, first of all, it will reveal things about the current investigation. so based on the arguments justice is making, this investigation is ongoing. they have witnesses who have provided information. if this information in the affidavit is released, it's going to expose that. it's going to shorten the investigation. it's going to disrupt it. it's going to cut it off before they are ready and before they feel like they have completed it. it also importantly, anderson, would set a potential precedent for other counterintelligence cases where classified information is at risk. one of the things we have to keep in mind is that even though this is a former president, the justice department needs to apply the law equally amongst people. and so if in this circumstance a court says, yes, there's a high public interest and so we're going to order the release of the affidavit, the justice department has to think about the equities in other

investigations. all sorts of national security investigations potentially have a fairly significant public interest. they're highly classified documents, they're important national security cases. so i would think the justice department is really concerned about the precedent that this might set. >> judge gertner, if the judge does release portions of the affidavit, it's likely a lot would be redacted. we talked to elliot williams last night and he said it would basically be a giant black box because of all the redactions. >> no, i think that's right. one other thing related to what we've been talking about, by the way, whereas the judge asked the government to check with trump about the release of the warrant, he's not asked trump's lawyers about the release of the search warrant affidavit. and my understanding is that trump's lawyers were present today but didn't say anything. >> right. >> clearly if trump weighed in, that would at least eliminate one concern, which is the concern that someone who has not

yet been indicted, if he's ever indicted, this will be massive pretrial publicity. if he has waived those arguments by agreeing to this release. but they said nothing. >> carrie, why do you think that is, carrie? >> i think two potential reasons which are very different of why the trump lawyers might not have said anything. one, they can let the media organizations do the work on this. the arguments in the public interest are stronger from my perspective as coming from the media organizations versus coming from the former president. there's also a possibility, so this is the second potential spl na explanation, that the lawyers representing the president are potentially implicated. if they have been involved as an intermediary between the justice department and the former president and made assertions about documents having been returned, they might be potentially concerned about their own exposure here and need

to be thinking through that. >> carrie cordero, nancy gertner, appreciate it, thank you. much more on reaction among the former president and their allies, and the money they have been making ever since the fbi showed up at mar-a-lago, cnn's kaitlin collins joins us with that. so what is the former president's legal team official position on release the affidavit? >> officially they haven't taken one, anderson. they're saying one thing publicly and another thing in court. what they're saying publicly is they want this full affidavit released. this is what justified that search of the former president's home. and they say they want to see all of it. they say in the interest of transparency there should be no redactions. of course we've seen some of the comments from some of his attorneys noting that it would reveal witnesses who helped justify this warrant. but then what they're saying in court, anderson, really isn't much of anything. christina bobb, one of trump's attorneys was there in court as the proceeding was going on. she said she was just there to observe it.

she didn't formally file anything trying to say that they do publicly wanting to see that affidavit released in its full form and instead she was just there really observing. and so it is notable they are saying one thing publicly in social media and on cable television and not really saying much of anything in court yet. though i am still told by a source they are reserving that option and may pursue it in the near future. >> who are the president's lawyers in all of this? you mentioned one of them. how do they compare to some of the other infamous attorneys he's had recently? >> he's no stranger to attorneys. he's had to deal with them when it came to the mueller probe, his impeachment hearings, for several different cases including the one in new york right now. what you're even is evan corcoran is the lead attorney and he has christina bobb. she was presenti at mar-a-lago when the search was going on, on monday. she was there in the investigators visited back in june as was evan corcoran.

he is the one standing behind steve ban on when he was in court dealing with his legal difficulties. so he's got a few others on his team. but i am told that he is searching to add someone else because this is such a sprawling case. it is multi-pronged. it involves the justice department not just in florida but also in washington. so they are looking to add someone from florida. they have not yet announced who that attorney is going to be. but i am told that trump has been on the phone with potential candidates for this just as recently as this week as they are trying to figure out what their legal strategy is going to be here. >> what sort of fund-raising is the former president doing off the search at mar-a-lago? >> a lot. he is bringing in a lot of money from this. it's not a surprise. if you get his text messages, which obviously reporters do because they want to see what he is saying to his supporters, and he has basically been fund-raising nonstop off of this search, which he is referring to as a raid conducted by democrats of his home instead of a lawfully executed search warrant of his residence because he had

classified information there according to the justice department. he has been fund-raising off of it. email after email and text after text has been about this search of mar-a-lago. i am told by a source that actually in the days following the search initially right after it happened, two of those days they topped over a million dollars in donations to his political action committee, which is quite a lot of money obviously. he has been raising money ever since he left office. but it does speak to while you're watching how this legal strategy is playing out how he is using this to his benefit when it comes to fund-raising. >> caikaitlin collins, apprecia it. whatever is unsealed and revealed about the government's case might not answer the why question. why would the former president take and try to keep classified documents he was not entitled to? maggie haberman joins us next on that reporting. also, with the former trump organization chief financial officer allen weisselberg pleaded to in court and what he agreed to testify to in exchange for a lighter sentence at

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hanging over nearly everything that we've learned about the search at mar-a-lago and all we might learn if and when a redacted version of the affidavit is unsealed, what did the president want with the documents in the first place and why did he keep them when they wanted them back. one reason to boil down to two words, me and mine. maggie haberman joins us now. you raise a bunch of different explanations but you raise one possibility that this may be more about the president -- former president's personality than anything else. >> it could be and he was certainly known as somebody who liked to show things off. he liked to show off -- >> chatchkies. >> when he was a businessman he had them in some corner of his office. shaquille o'neal's giant shoe he would show off to visitors.

he liked showing off these kim jong-un letters when he was president. people would come to the office, reporters, visiting dignitaries, you name it, and he would wave them around. some of those were among the items that were at mar-a-lago so that's one possibility. we know that he was telling advisers when he was resisting giving these things back, "they're mine, it's mine" and so forth so that's one possibility. the other is that he sees -- one other is that he sees some advantage and whether that is something that makes him seem agrand diesed or bigger or whether he could see it as leverage of some kind, you have to consider that ponssibility. there's a lot we still don't know. but trump throughout his presidency acted as if there was no difference between himself and the government and his company. it was all one big brand. >> we've talked about this before. when i went to his apartment to interview him long ago, i was obsessed, he had this fake

renoir painting. this is the fake he had in his house and it's a pretty bad fake because i pulled up the original and i looked at the original right next to it. but he swears that is the real one. he has continued to push that for a long time. is that sort of in that same vein of like he just likes to show off stuff that he has? >> yeah, look, again, part of the me aspect of this is self-aggrandizement. so claiming a renoir that you can tell looking at the sbintert is not real is part of that. >> these are real documents. >> these are real documents and we don't know why he had them. we do know that he was told to give them back repeatedly and it took many, many months in 2021 and he finally sent back some but not all. there was a much longer fight. i don't want to sound as if we're minimizing the potential harm or law breaking or anything else in saying that he simply treated this all as if it was about himself.

and then where it went from that, we don't know. >> you've also reported on how this is emblematic of in general how he dealt with documents. flushing them down the toilet, ripping them up. >> yes. he was sloppy. there was -- documents would be ripped up. there were people who would have to go through his trash or go through the floor and tape them back together and give them to the staff secretary to look at to see whether they had to be preserved under the presidential records act which existed after nixon. when nixon wanted to leave the white house with documents and tapes and then it became law. trump is supposed to be abiding by that. he never wanted to. he would take classified material up to the residence. john kelly tried really hard to keep him from doing that. i think that some of those constraints that kelly tried putting in place, trump definitely bristled at. it's not clear to me what it looked like by 2020. >> politically, what does the former president gain or lose if the affidavit is released? >> it depends, anderson, because

we don't know what's in it. obviously several media outlets, including my own, have argued that it should be released. the justice department is arguing against it. trump's folks gain more by saying see, they won't unseal it. if they thought there was advantage to this, i think he would be getting into this fight himself. his lawyers have not filed anything in this case. his lawyer was there observing the proceedings today, but it's allies of trump who are going about arguing the same case as the media. i think he sees more advantage in being seen as somebody being victimized. because as we saw with the warrant, when the warrant was unsealed, it was not good news for trump as a lot of people around him had been intimating. if not good news, neutral news. the statutes there are problematic for him. and so i suspect that the affidavit would have similar issues. >> we should point out cnn, "the new york times" and other news organizations have been pushing for the release. maggie, appreciate it. thanks very much. because the former president unlike any before him is often connected to more than one court

case at a time, there is this tonight. allen weisselberg, his former chief financial officer standing up today pleading the good to multiple felony counts that went on for years. for more on the plea deal, we're joined by kara scannell. so what details were revealed in the court today? >> weisselberg pleaded guilty to 15 felonies and admitted his involvement in a decades-long tax fraud scheme with the trump organization. he admitted under oath before the judge that he knowingly did not pay income tax on a number of corporate benefits including a corporate apartment, mercedes-benz and private school tuition for two of his children. weisselberg also said he hid those benefits from his accountant. as part of this deal, he is required to testify against the trump organization where he has worked for more than 40 years. when it goes on trial on related charges in october, weisselberg has agreed to do this. the manhattan district attorney, who brought this case, said that weisselberg's testimony will be

invaluable. in exchange, weisselberg will receive a five-month sentence. the judge has okayed that. but he warned him today that if he fails to meet any of the obligations he faces, he could receive a stiff sentence in state prison. one thing weisselberg will not do, he will not implicate the former president or any of his children at the tax fraud trial and is not cooperating with the manhattan district attorney's ongoing criminal investigation into the trump organization's finances. anderson. >> has the trump organization responded? >> yeah. so there's clearly no bad blood between weisselberg and the trump organization despite his guilty plea today. they put out a statement calling him a fine and honorable man, saying that he was threatened and unfairly prosecuted. the trump organization also said that it will not plead guilty to the charges it's facing, ten counts, and said they will go to trial in october. next, exclusive new cnn reporting on the claim the former president made that he could declassify by standing order anything he took out of

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from the oval office back to the residence. joining us now, special correspondent jamie gangel who's been checking that claim. the top officials from the prior administration and gloria borger. jamie, how many former trump administration officials did you ask about this claim of a standing declassification order and what did they say? >> anderson, we reached out to 18 former, and these were senior trump administration officials, white house, national security, intelligence, justice department, including his former chiefs of staff. many of these people served in positions where they either would have been included in the declassification process or at the very least aware of such orders. here is what we were told. each and every one pushed back, dismissed the claim that trump had a standing order to declassify documents that left the oval office and were taken up to the residence. in fact, many of them laughed when i called them.

something that doesn't happen all the time with former trump officials, many of them went on the record. former white house chief of staff john kelly told us, quote, nothing approaching an order that foolish was ever given, and i can't imagine anyone that worked at the white house after me that would have simply shrugged their shoulders and allowed that order to go forward without dying in the ditch trying to stop it. we also spoke to acting chief of staff mick mulvaney, he flatly dismissed the idea and told me, quote, i'm not aware of a general standing order and we also spoke to former national security advisor john bolton and he said, quote, it was a complete fiction. just to go on and on, olivia troye, who was a former homeland security advisor to mike pence, she called the notion ludicrous. another very senior intelligence official laughed, said it was ridiculous.

and a very, very senior trump administration official, arouar anderson, called it, quote, bullshit. he was not the only one who said that to me today, anderson. >> gloria, what are your sources telling you about how declassification actually works compared to what happened in the trump white house? >> the source i spoke to familiar with this process in the trump white house said that, look, the president can say i want something declassified. that's fine. but what has to happen is it has to be memorialized. there has to be a record of it. it has to be run through the paces of various agencies, and this source said to me, so as a practical matter, you know, the president has to be able to prove if he's saying he asked for things to be declassified that he did ask for things to be declassified. otherwise, he says, it's like a tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear it. so he says it's ridiculous. >> jamie, as gloria was saying,

there would be a paper trail. >> right. >> with other agencies who were involved in this process as well. were any of the people you talked to aware of anything that donald trump is now claiming? >> no. as one said to me, where is his signature? prove it to me. this can't simply be an idea in his head. he can't -- several of the sources said to me he can't just wave a magic wand and make it so. there is a process. it is a complicated process. and it frequently involves many of the agencies, because it could impact the cia, it could impact the department of justice. and certainly let's just make the point, not after the fact can a former president declare all of this. >> it's not real attractive. >> no, it's not. >> and there's a standard way, gloria, to declassify documents. >> yeah. i was told that there's a

handful of attorneys inside the white house who actually have this kind of top clearance. but the national security agency really kind of controlled this. but as jamie is saying, it has to go through assorted agencies like the defense department, the state department, the cia, who are all going to be affected. i was also told by a source that the president himself was told this. that you can't just routinely declassify something and say it's done. and then i was told he was counseled that's not the way it works, but he believed he could do it any way he wanted. >> jamie, is it clear to you if there's a strategy of the former president making this claim or is this just making as many -- you know, they made a bunch of different claims and just seeing what sticks and, you know, make as many different claims as they can? >> so one source said to me if donald trump did this, this was his best-kept secret. look at the timing. what's going on now where all of

a sudden he wants to do this. several sources said to me it is a defense strategy. he is trying to have a defense for why all these documents were at mar-a-lago that shouldn't have been there. >> we'll have more on jamie's new story with someone quoted in it. we'll talk to the former president's national security advisor, john bolton, who joins us with his assessment of trump's claim about a standing declassification order. f orever! i'm trying! this cheap stuff is too thin! i told you not to gett the other toilet paper. here's the new charmin ultra strong. ahhh! my bottom's been saved! woooo! with its diamond weave texture, new charmin ultra strong cleans better with fewer sheets and less effort. what's everybody waiting for? this? ok hon, we know you're clean. we all go, why not enjoy the go with charmin. that little leaf brought this old photo to life, i can finally put some names to those faces...

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so we were just discussing the new exclusive cnn reporting quoting 18 officials in the previous administration who say they don't believe the former president's claim for why he had classified and top secret information at his florida residence and how they say there was no standing order to declassify documents taken from the oval office. we wanted to get perspective from one of the people quoted in that piece, former national security advisor john bolton, who's previously served as u.s. ambassador to the u.n. he's also the author of a memoir of his time at the white house, "the room where it happened." ambassador bolton, you've been saying for a while the notion there was a standing order to declassify documents is a, what he called a complete fiction and that you were never briefed on anything like that. cnn has now spoken with 17 other former members of the trump administration who say the same thing, no such order existed to their knowledge. if you had been aware that there was such a policy, would you have argued against it?

>> absolutely. it makes no sense whatsoever. number one, there's no real danger if the president takes documents from the oval office to the living quarters in the main white house. if there were people up there with access to those documents that were problematic, we'd have a much more serious issue. the safety of the president himself would be at stake. moreover, it would be a logistical nightmare, because the only way you would know what to declassify would be to take down information on every document that he took up there every night and then transmit it around. i mean the paperwork to do that alone would be overwhelming. and moreover, i think what shows that this is a fabrication is that the focus is on donald trump as opposed to the rest of the government. when you declassify a document, it wouldn't be declassified just as to donald trump, the entire government would have it declassified so that at least in theory, news organizations would

request production under the freedom of information act of every single document he declassified. >> so there would be a paper trail. >> and there would be a flood. yes, there has to be a paper trail. now, to be clear, some people interpret this as saying that the subordinates of the president can countermand his order in effect and that's not true. it's very true that the president does have planary authority but if people believe that there's some very strong reason why documents shouldn't be declassified, they ought to be able to speak to their cabinet secretaries and they may want to speak to the president. >> maggie haberman recently said the former president may have kept these documents because he loved showing them off to people and it could have been in her words less nefarious than it was obstinate. do you think that's a possible explanation? >> oh, absolutely.

i think some of the charts and graphs and pictures and things like that that he accumulated were curiosities. they were cool things to have. and i know there are a lot of conspiracy theories about plans to use it for blackmail and leverage. i can't rule that out certainly. the president never indicated anything like that to me. i think he was just inquisitive. some days he wanted more french fries, other days he wanted documents. >> wow, french fries or documents. mike turner, the ranking republican appeared on cnn today and said the fbi would have to meet a pretty high threshold to the level of appear imminent national security threat to justify a search at the president's residence. do you agree with that or the fact that these were in an unsecure location, would that be enough reason to go in and get them in your opinion? >> well, i think there are a lot of potential dangers. until we see the documents we

can't tell. i think what the congressman may have been saying and maybe not but i'll say it is when you go after a president, in the political environment we're in, a former president like donald trump, you better be absolutely sure you've got no alternative. you can see the reaction that's been provoked already. as an alumnus of the department of justice, i'd like to think that they went through all the political calculations that were involved. i think it's very unfortunate that they have to worry about it. but that's the circumstance we're in. that's why the magistrates inclination today to release some of the underlying affidavit in the search warnrant is potentially important. i am entirely sympathetic with the justice department's arguments, but we're in both a political fight and a legal fight. and unless the department does better on the political side, i think they're going to be overwhelmed by the kind of emotions that trump has stirred up. >> yeah, you said a couple days

ago on cnn in the political battle between the former president and the department of justice, the doj was being overwhelmed by donald trump. you compared them to lambs to the slaughter. do you think the release of a redacted version of the document would change the political landscape when it comes to the investigation? >> we'd have to see what was redacted. but i'd urge the justice department, and it goes against the grain, to be creative on this. for example, there may be ways to handle this other than simply blacking outline line after lin after line of the affidavit. for example, if the affidavit describes the kinds of documents that the department of justice felt was so very sensitive, it may well reveal information in the documents that in the hands of an adversary would be very dangerous. but instead of simply blacking that out, an alternative to think about would be to paraphrase it. so, for example, they could say

instead of quoting from the document or whatever they might do, they might just do documents regarding u.s. nuclear capabilities, or documents regarding chinese ballistic missile development or something like that, something innocuous phrase that signified the importance of the information without revealing it. and there may be other ways to do that in other parts of the affidavit dealing with the witnesses and the theory of the case that they're espousing. i think this is going to be very hard to do. but i just think if the department insists on the normal practice of complete confidentiality of the affidavit, it's going to take a terrible beating even from people in congress who are trying to help it out. >> ambassador bolton, i appreciate your time. thank you. >> thank you. so just ahead, cnn's clarissa ward is in afghanistan. her harrowing journey into the

heart of taliban country. what she found there a year after american forces left. because with miro, they could problem solve together, and find thehe answer that was right under their nose. or... his nose.

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21 people are dead, another 33 injured in afghanistan after the latest explosion in kabul. the attack occurred during evening prayers at a mosque, which you see here along with mourners praying next to one of the vick tems. children are among those killed. "the washington post" also reports the islamic state's local branch has claimed similar attacks in recent months. it comes days after taliban celebrated one year rule. clarissa ward recently travelled outside kabul into the taliban heartland, where residents talked proudly about their fight against americans and have begun reflecting openly about the long

and bloody war. >> reporter: there were no tears when u.s. forces left afghanistan. the landscape is awash with white flags, marking the graves of taliban fighters killed in battle. among them is the son of nabi. this is your son? he tells us he was killed during a u.s.-supported afghan special forces night raid on the family home in 2019. video of the aftermath shows the scale of the destruction. after a protracted gun battle, the house was levelled, killing a second son as well as his niece and her daughter. there was a lot of blood spilled, the voice says off camera. the rebuilt living room is now a shrine to the dead. what was your reaction when american forces left a year ago? >> translator: i said that peace

has come to afghanistan, he says. there will be no more mothers becoming widows, like our mothers and sisters who were widowed and our children killed. >> reporter: across this rural taliban stronghold, american forces were seen as invaders who brought death and destruction with their night raids and drone strikes. peace has brought a chance to air long-held grievances at the local market, we're immediately surrounded. every household had at least one fighter, this man tells us. and every house had people who were killed by the americans and their drones. and we are proud of that. this man is treated like royalty here. his brother is believed to be responsible for downing a helicopter full of u.s. special forces. >> so, he's taking me to the spot where he says his brother shot down a chinook. >> reporter: it was august 6,

2011. hamas says his brother was hiding behind the trees and shot the chinook down with an rpg, as it prepare eed to land by the river. 30 americans were killed, the single greatest loss of american life in the entire afghan war. there were a lot of celebrations and not just here, he tells us. it was a big party. >> i'm sure you can understand that it's hard to hear that people were celebrating about the deaths of dozens of americans. this was a heroic achievement because the people who were killed on this plane, they were the killers of osama bin laden, he says, and sheik osama is on the crown of muslims. so, definitely the people were happy about this. days later, the u.s. says it responded with a strike that killed hamas' brother, another white flag raised in a valley

where martyrs were made and views hardened. >> clarissa ward joins us now from kabul. what is a year under taliban rule done for this area and those who lived there? has life improved? >> reporter: well, i think, anderson, the main improvement in terms of their quality of life is just the security situation because even after american forces kind of pulled back and it was the afghan army who were doing the majority of the fighting, that entire area was still incredibly kinetic. there was a lot of fighting, a lot of death, and a lot of destruction. so, now they definitely see that they can go out during the nighttime. they can let their children go to school, boys only, of course, but at least their children -- or their boys -- can go to school now because it's easier to move around and it's safer. at the same time, it is so incredibly poor, it is still very difficult to get work. there is no part of this country

that is not feeling the impact and the pinch of the economic crisis. and one thing i thought was also interesting is that a couple of the men that we talked to, even though in these rural areas, girls' education has not really traditionally been a priority, they did say that they do want to see their girls get educated. obviously the taliban has issued that temporary -- what they call a temporary -- suspension on girls' secondary education. so, i thought it was interesting to hear that they would like to see that lifted. >> sickening to hear him talking about celebrating the downing of the u.s. chinook with u.s. special forces on board. earlier this week you spoke to people in kabul and you spoke to women trying to get secondary education despite being banned. how striking is it to see different attitudes toward taliban rule in different places? they're less than 50 miles away from each other. >> reporter: it's a two-hour drive, anderson. so, it is a very stark contrast.

one very important part of that is that the benefits that people reaped in afghanistan during the u.s. presence here, the billions of dollars in investment and infrastructure and development, very little of that trickled down to rural communities like the tangy valley. >> billions of dollars. thank you. up next, a reminder of the good in our world, a daring rescue caught on video. >> there you go, there you go.

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-- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com earlier this week in san antonio, a group of strangers rushed to rescue a driver involved in a rollover crash. at least nine people worked together to flip over the car and get it upright. a military veteran with a broken hand led the rescue. he flagged down other rescuers to stop and help, and they did. the driver is rushed to the hospital. he's recovering. we wish him well and applaud those good samaritans for their action. the news continues. i want to hand it over to aliyn camerota and "cnn tonight." >> will we all get to see the extensive affidavit behind the fbi's retrieval of 20-plus boxes containing highly classified documents donald trump took with him from the white house to mar-a-lago. a judge says maybe, but not yet. and we may have to read through a lot of redactions. the battle to unseal the affidavit, meaning the