captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> sreenivasan: for our intelligence community to be effective over the long haul, we must maintain the trust of the american people and people around the world. >> sreenivasan: in a bid to solidify that trust, president obama today unveiled new rules for government spying, including the bulk collection of phone records. good evening, i'm hari sreenivasan. judy woodruff is away. the former c.e.o. of a major health insurer on ways to change the way we pay for care to improve our well being. >> when someone has a congestive heart failure, we pay a lot of money to the care system for that. but if that same organization prevents the failure they don't get paid for it.

>> sreenivasan: and it's friday, david brooks and ruth marcus are here to analyze the week's news. those are just some of the stories we're covering on tonight's "pbs newshour." >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> charles schwab, proud supporter of the pbs "newshour." >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... and friends of the newshour. >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting.

and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> sreenivasan: after months of leaks and growing criticism, president obama laid out surveillance reforms today. he said the national security agency must no longer be the storehouse for phone "metadata" that it collects. and, he promised an end to spying on allied leaders. we will hear some of what the president said, and have reaction, right after the news summary. later the president signed a spending bill that puts an end to the budget wars for now, he held a ceremony, the bill funds government operations through the rest of the federal fiscal year. a miss miss man accused of sending poison >> sreenivasan: a mississippi man accused of sending poisoned letters to the president is pleading guilty after all. james everette dutschke changed his plea today, at a federal court hearing in oxford, mississippi. he was charged with mailing letters tainted with ricin -- a highly toxic substance -- to the president, a u.s. senator and a

judge. >> sreenivasan: california governor jerry brown has declared a drought emergency, amid the state's worst dry spell in 100 years of record-keeping. reservoirs are drying up, and snowpack in the mountains has dropped to 20% of normal. speaking in san francisco today, brown appealed for voluntary water conservation and he left open the possibility of making it mandatory. >> we are in a unprecedented, very serious situation and people should pause and reflect on how dependent we are on the rain, on nature, and one another. i'm calling for a collaborative effort to restrain our water use. i'm also setting in motion easier water transfers. >> sreenivasan: the parched conditions are also fueling wildfires. one blaze burned today in the foothill suburbs northeast of los angeles, keeping thousands of people away from their homes.

the fire was 30% contained. >> sreenivasan: scores of bushfires raged out of control in southern australia today, fueled by high winds and a searing heat wave. the combination fanned the flames, forcing hundreds of people to flee. at least one person was killed. police officials say at least a dozen of the fires were intentionally set. >> sreenivasan: the syrian government has floated an offer to negotiate a partial cease- fire and prisoner swap with rebels. syria's foreign minister presented the offer today, as he met with the russian foreign minister in moscow. it came just before scheduled peace talks in geneva next week. in washington, secretary of state john kerry warned syrian president bashar al-assad must agree to give up power. >> there is no political solution whatsoever if assad is not discussing a transition and if he thinks he's going to be part of that future. it's not gonna happen. the people who are the opponents of this regime will never, ever stop. it will be a low grade insurgency at least and worse,

potentially even a civil war, if it continues, because they will not stop. >> sreenivasan: meanwhile, the main western-backed opposition group met today on whether to attend the geneva conference. our chief foreign affairs correspondent margaret warner will have more on all of this, later in the program. >> sreenivasan: pennsylvania's attempt to impose a photo i.d. requirement for voters has run into a legal roadblock. a state judge struck down the 2012 law today. he ruled the statute does not further the goal of free and fair elections, as republicans had argued. the ruling likely will be appealed to the state supreme court. >> sreenivasan: republican senator tom coburn of oklahoma will retire at year's end, with two years left in his second term. in a statement, coburn said he's shifting his focus elsewhere. he said a recurrence of prostate cancer did not affect his decision. coburn is 65 years old. he's been a fierce advocate of cutting federal spending. his announcement is the latest in a spate of congressional retirements in recent days. >> sreenivasan: the surgeon general's office has significantly expanded the

already long list of diseases caused by smoking. today's announcement follows the 50th anniversary of the 1964 report that formally declared smoking a human health hazard. acting surgeon general dr. boris lushniak said cigarettes are still killing people. >> since the first surgeons general report in 1964 over 20 million premature deaths can be attributed to cigarette smoking. today the annual death toll from smoking is approaching 500,000 per year. >> the science has revealed in stark clarity that common disease such as diabetes melitis rheumatoid arthritis and colon and rectal cancer are also caused by smoking. enough is enough. >> sreenivasan: lushniak called for more aggressive action to make the next generation of americans, smoke-free. >> sreenivasan: the company involved in the west virginia water crisis filed today for federal bankruptcy protection. freedom industries owns the plant that leaked a chemical into the elk river last week. the contamination cut off water to some 300,000 people in charleston and nine counties.

officials began restoring water service, in stages, on monday. >> sreenivasan: on wall street the dow jones industrial average gained 41 points today to close at 16,458. the nasdaq fell 21 points to close at 4197. for the week, the dow gained a .01% the nasdaq rose half a percent. >> sreenivasan: the last japanese soldier to surrender after world war two has died at a tokyo hospital. hiroo onoda hid out in a philippines jungle for 29 years after the war ended in 1945. he finally emerged in march of 1974 and returned home to japan and a hero's welcome. later, he became a rancher and even ran a children's nature school. hiroo onoda was 91 years old. >> sreenivasan: still to come on the "newshour"; president obama's push to limit n.s.a. spying; a former health insurance c.e.o. on the challenge of cutting costs; eradicating polio in india; a preview of next week's syria peace talks; plus, david brooks and ruth marcus on the week's news.

>> sreenivasan: now, we look in depth at the president's surveillance speech today at the justice department. newshour correspondent kwame holman begins our coverage. >> as a president who looks at intelligence every morning, i also cant help but be reminded that america must be vigilant in the face of threats. >> reporter: the president presented a measured defense of u.s. surveillance, and he largely left the operations intact, citing a presidential advisory panel. >> what i did not do is stop these programs wholesale, not only because i felt that they made us more secure, but also because nothing in that initial review, and nothing that i have learned since, indicated that our intelligence community has sought to violate the law or is cavalier about the civil liberties of their fellow citizens. >> reporter: at the same time, mr. obama sought to reassure the

public by calling for several changes. >> the reforms i'm proposing today should give the american people greater confidence that their rights are being protected, even as our intelligence and law enforcement agencies maintain the tools they need to keep us safe. >> reporter: chief among those reforms: the national security agency would continue it's sweeping collection of phone call information or meta-data, but it would no longer store the data. i believe we need a new approach. i am therefore ordering a transition that will end the section 215 bulk metadata program as it currently exists, and establish a mechanism that preserves the capabilities we need without the government holding this bulk meta-data. >> reporter: a review panel has recommended the n.s.a. shift control of the phone data to phone companies or to a third party, but the companies are resisting. the president said he's giving attorney general eric holder and

the intelligence community 60 days to study the options. he further said he wants to inject new perspectives into the workings of the foreign intelligence surveillance court, the body that oversees terrorism investigations. >> i am calling on congress to authorize the establishment of a panel of advocates from outside government to provide an independent voice in significant cases before the foreign intelligence surveillance court. >> reporter: president obama's speech was intended first and foremost to address americans' concerns about surveillance and individual privacy. but it also was directed at global audiences, who have joined in the debate and criticism on the scope and targeting of u.s. surveillance. in october, the world learned the u.s. has monitored german chancellor, angela merkel's phone calls, and those of other allied leaders. today, the president banned such eavesdropping. >> the leaders of our close friends and allies deserve to know that if i want to learn what they think about an issue,

i will pick up the phone and call them, rather than turning to surveillance. >> reporter: he also noted however that leaders some of the countries who've criticized american intelligence gathering, are relying on the data themselves to protect their own people. and, he did not hide his disapproval of edward snowden, the n.s.a. contractor whose leaks exposed u.s. surveillance efforts to the world. >> moreover, the sensational way in which these disclosures have come out has often shed more heat than light, while revealing methods to our adversaries that could impact our operations in ways that we may not fully understand for years to come. >> reporter: after the speech, democratic senator patrick leahy, chairman the judiciary committee, voiced support. he said in a statement: >> i commend the president for taking important steps to maintain our national security while protecting privacy rights and civil liberties, both here and abroad. >> reporter: some civil liberties advocates said the reforms don't go nearly far enough. but in his own statement,

republican house speaker john boehner warned the opposite may be true. he said: >> reporter: that sets the stage for congressional debate and action already on tap for this year. so did the president rein in the n.s.a. enough, too much, or is it too early to tell? we got two views. john mclaughlin was the cia deputy director and then acting director during the george w. bush administration. he now teaches at the johns hopkins school of advanced international studies. and kate martin is the director of the center for national security studies, a civil liberties advocacy group. so mr. mclack hundred i want to start with you first, first your reacts on today's speech. >> well, i think the president did a very good job of talking about the nsa in the context of american intelligence.

and explaining to the american people why what they do is important. i think he also made an important statement that needed to be made by a senior official in telling the american public directly from the president that the nsa does not read all-of-your erck mail. the nsa does not listen to all of your phone calls. because that, that perception is alive out there. so i think he did a good job on those scores. where i would comment though is that as i listen the speech i think the phrase or two that kept coming to my mind is the definite sill very much in the details here. and we'll have to wait and see whether the major changes that he proposed on the-- on the metadata collection program and particularly on the insertion of police officer see acts, whether these ultimately help, hurt or make no difference whatsoever in the tectiveness of our intelligence collection. >> your initial thoughts

well i thought that he made two very significant improvements to the current system which i think in the long run will help our intelligence as well as our civil liberties and that was to recognize the serious risks involved in government collection of bulk data on americans and announce on the 215 program that that would be ended and secondly to recognize the importance of having a judicial order before the nsa asks for information on americans. and the government, you know, for the last 25 years has taken the position that the government doesn't need a judicial order to get third party records like these telephone records. and now this president has recognized that the technological changes are the last 20 years have

increased both the intelligence capabilities but the risks of government intelligence activities. and move we need to address both of those. >> mr. mclaughlin, will this change the cell phone collection data or that everyone is so concerned about, will it make a difference? >> well, again, it depends a little bit on the details if you want to move this information as he proposed into some hands other than the nsa, the first question you have to ask is that safer alternative than leaving it with the nsa i challenge the basic premise that there is a danger or a threat to american's privacy by the nsa holding this material all of the investigations so far have uncovered no abuse. they've uncovered no illegality and part of the nsa's mission and expertise is actually protecting information. i don't find that private entities whether it's my phone company or internet

services i deal with are all that good at protecting my private information. the ns a a is, i don't feel threatened at all and i don't feel americans should feel threatened by having this information held by the nsa despite this perception. so i think how that's done, it may be a way to do it, that gives everyone the assurance the information is safe, secure and protecting their privacy. but we'll have to see the details of that. because i don't think it's really challenging their privacy to you. >> miss martin? >> i think the president's review group outlines the real risks that our history has shown us when the government has access to information about americans that the government is tempted, an administration can be telled to use that information for improve purposes to skew the democratic process. and the fact that the nsa hasn't done that in the last seven years is no, you know,

assurance that it won't happen in the future, especially if you go back just as early as 2001 and 2002, you have the clear example of the, a white house going to the nsa and saying check on american approximates on americans, never mind the legal restriction. that just happened and we have in my lifetime, in your lifetime, the example of the government, the nsa and other intelligence agencies collecting on the civil rights movement, et cetera, in order to discredit those movements. and so the review group said to the president that's the risk of the government creating enormous databases of information on americans and you can accomplish the intelligence that you need to get, without creating such government databases. and i think the president correctly recognized that that is what he needs to do

and is going to do. >> mr. mclaughlin what about these steps that he has tried to outline about increasing transparency, at home and abroad saying that i'm not going to be spying on other world leaders and i'm also really going to be starting to extend protections for citizens around the world, similar to protection that citizens have here in the u.s. does that increase our risk? >> well, i don't think it increases our risk, necessarily. and as usual the president's speech is a it-- if you look at the language carefully, as the chief executive he always has the option of making an exception if he finds that it is in the national interests to take a look at some foreign country that he's taken off the list here. one thing i would suggest is that we ask foreign countries for reciprocity because we will be the only country in the world that is that careful in monitoring the activities and intentions of other countries, although he was

quite clear to say we will continue to check on the foreign policy and other intentions of countries. but i don't have any problem with him taking our close partners off of that list and providing he knows and i'm sure he does, that he can always make an exception. if one of our partners, for example, is debating policy on something like iran sanctions and it's not possible to get a straight answer from them by just asking, it may be quite likely that the president will want to know what are they really thinking but if he as a matter of principles i think he's not done anything harmful here. >> what about those efforts to increase transparency including asking privacy advocates to-- say wag is this policy going forward, how do you dep define it and decide it? >> well, i think one of the thinks the president rightly acknowledged was that the 215 program had been adopted and implemented in secret without any as he said

vigorous public debate. and i hope that he sticks to his promise that we need to have a public debate on what the extent of government surveillance should be, and what safeguards are adequate and that this is the beginning of that. and you can see congress is already engaged in it the changes that the president has ordered today are only the beginning of what needs to happen in our view and he-- and we do need more information about the large number of bulk collection programs that the nsa and other parts of the government are currently engaged in on american's personal information. >> all right, kate martin, john mclaughlin, thanks so much for your time. >> thank you.

>> sreenivasan: the obama administration announced earlier this week that enrollment in the insurance exchanges picked up last month after a troubled rollout. more than 2.2 million americans picked an insurance plan by the end of december. but even as many are watching how that effort is faring, the american health system is just starting to grapple with the difficult questions of costs and quality. judy woodruff has a conversation on that issue, taped earlier this week. >> woodruff: no matter how you feel about the health care law known as the affordable care act, many experts agree we are entering a critical time that will test ideas about what may or may not work when it comes to changing the health care system while much of the debate surrounding obama care centres on coverage and penalties, parts of the law are designed to see if costs can be reduced and spending slowed down further. one large insurer, kaiser permanente is already incorporated into its model some of these ideas

including an emphasis on prevention. a greater use of electronic records and changing how doctors are paid including coordinating how patients are treated through team care. kaiser employs 17,000 doctors, owns more than 35 hospitals and has annual revenues of $50 billion. its record has been the subject of both praise and criticism. and it's just departed c.e.o. john halvorson has had a distinct voice with all of these issues. he has a new book titled don't let health care bankrupt america. he joins me now. welcome to the newshour. >> thank you for having me. >> woodruff: so this new health care law has rolled out and you have a unique perspective on it. unlike most americans you've been involved in health-care management your entire career. you just, as we said, stepped down from running the nation's biggest nonprofit health care and hospital system. what does it look like to you? >> well, we are the only

industrialized country that hasn't covered everyone em else is universal insurance. and we are way overdue. this is the right thing for us to do. we need to cover everyone. we are now in the process of rolling out an attempt to do that and there have been a few challenges in the process. it hasn't been done perfectly but it is directionally very correct this is the rate thing to do. we do need to cover everyone. and we need to get this right and you've said that you think eventually it will be better for americans, but you've also said not enough has been done to address the costs on it, what dow mean by that if we cover everyone and it's still unaffordable, then that's still going to be a major problem for the country, so we need to bring down the cost of care. we need to make care more affordable. we need to make care better, we need to have better care outcomes. we need to have the health-care business system focus on improving care and

right now the way the system is set up, it basically rewards bad outcomes, it rewards infections, the system is set up in a very perverse way. and as a result of that we spend way too much money on care and we don't get the outcomes we deserve. >> what is an example that people could identify what you just said that too much is spent on the wrong thing well, right now 1.7 million americans go to the hospital every year and get an infection that they did to the have the day they went to the hospital. that shouldn't happen and those infections are very profitable for most health care delivery systems. right now patients get pressure ulcers in hospitals. those pressure ulcers shouldn't happen. we are focusing on the best care for the patients and doing in a systemic way, we think that pressure ulcers down to almost 0. but we don't do it because there is no reward in the system for doing that. >> i think yourself have ago

j nod some of the steps that have been taken with regard to prevention have haven't always ended up in ring wering the costs down as much as you would expect it would. >> sometimes the prevention doesn't bring the costs down, but what it does do is that it prevents an illness. and that is all by itself a good thing. if we can cut the number of diabetics in half, that's a huge benefit to everyone who isn't diabetic and if we do the right things we can cut the numbers in half and bring down the cost of care. so we need to focus on doing systemic things to identify people at high risk and then we need to support those people in minimizing their risk. and that can be done but right now what we do is we reward the opposite. when someone has a congestive heart failure, we pay a lot of money to the care system for that. but it approximate if that same organization prevents the failure, by intervening with the patient, helping the patient, making sure of medication, they don't get paid for it. and so we have a very

perverse set of incentives and we need to change the incentives around. when we change the incentives, care delivery will follow the incentives. >> the kind of coordinated care that kaiser permanente has in many ways pioneered there this country have been praised, you said by many. it's also, you also hear from patients, well, i don't want to be having to work within just a specific network of dk tores and hospitals. i want to be able to choose wherever i go to. how do you deal with that? >> well, a couple of things. one is the patients satisfaction levels at kaiser permanente are very high. if he wins all of the medicare standards, all the ratings on care quality and also satisfaction, j.d. powers rated kp as the highest satisfaction level so, part one, where what you do with it is making sure that if you have a limited number of care gives, that they are doing a really good

job. meeting patient needs, but patients do want choice. and it's fine for patients to have choice, that's a good thing, as long as the caregivers they choose have information. and have data, and have best practice. and if the caregivers they choose have all of that, then you're going to have better outcomes. right now the death rate for cancer can be three or four times higher if you go to wrong care system and patients don't know that. we need that information to be available to the patients and that is what the book says. the book stays we need data so the patients to make meaningful choices and if we put the data out there the caregivers get better as well. finally a question about what the country has been through in terms of watching the rom out of this new health care law. do you have concern that people are, many people are now so soured on this whole experience that it's going to be very hard for them to accept the idea of any more

substantive changes in our health-care system? >> well, we need to get this one right. we need to finish the job and we need to get the exchanges working. and we need to get this particular set of reform working, in i think when that happens, people will regain confidence. but you're right right now there have been so many errors that the people's confident is-- confidence is shaken and the only way to restore that is by getting right. >> woodruff: we're going to continue this conversation on-line, for now george halvorson, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> sreenivasan: it's been three years since a case of polio has been reported in india, a milestone that means the country can be officially declared "polio-free". newshour special correspondent fred de sam lazaro updates a report he filed on how this was accomplished. >> reporter: in india, the

battle against polio is being fought one mouthful at a time >> reporter: vaccinators have fanned out with coolers containing vials of the oral vaccine on a scale befitting a nation of 1.2 billion says lieven desomer, a campaign strategist for the u.n. >> you know, one national round we reached 175 million children. 150,000 supervisors, 1.2 million vaccinators >> reporter: they look for families, especially at bus and train stations in the populous northern states where polio was most endemic >> reporter: they look for young children, making sure to first check their pinky fingers, where an indelible ink is placed once a child is immunized. >> reporter: thousands of times, with little fuss, each vaccinator has administered the two-drop dose of vaccine. its easier to see how india can be a breeding ground for polio. hundreds of millions of people lack proper sanitation,

conditions that allow the virus to spread-usually attacking children, causing paralysis in some victims and in a few cases death. in addition, its difficult for public health workers to track the movements of india's huge nomadic and migrant populations on any given day 19 million people are on a train somewhere in india. that's why experts say the huge drop in polio cases were up to 150,000 a year in the eighties, is remarkable >> you have to pinch myself once in a while. it's amazing. it's part of history. we're making history here. >> desomer is with unicef which along with the world health organization, the u.s. centers for disease control and rotary international partnered with the indian government and the multiyear 2 plus billion dollar campaign. he says a few years ago, many impoverished communities resisted the vaccine

>> these are communities, which have not benefited from all the progress in india. and they have no roads. you know, water and sanitation. people have developmental issues and they will usually say you can reach us with a drop of vaccine, why can't you reach us with education and health and with water and sanitation? >> reporter: so they were suspicious? >> they were very, i mean quite suspicious >> reporter: suspicion that the vaccine wasn't what was claimed- was particularly high among india's muslim minority mufti mukarram ahmed, imam of the fatehpuri mosque in substantially muslim old delhi, says memories are still vivid of coercive attempts by the government in the 1970's to sterilize people here >> ( translated ): they thought that in the polio medicine they have placed some medicine to sterilize people. they used to think that just like in the time of sanjay gandhi when sterilization operations were going on, they thought now, instead of doing operations they can just give this medicine to the muslim community and our men and women

will not be able to have children >> reporter: he was among many religious leaders who were approached by doctors and the u.n agencies, reassured of their intentions and brought on board to endorse the polio campaign >> reporter: also coaxed in were bollywood mega-stars, like amitabh bacchan. in this tv spot he angrily tells parents to put aside excuses like the fear of caste or religious discrimination and immunize their children. his costar in the ad, shah rukh khan, is muslim >> his anger is justified. what's the connection between caste or religion and polio? any child can get this disease. that's why i too have vaccinated my kids against polio. now you please go and do the same. >> reporter: perhaps the most significant buy-in that helped the polio campaign came from government at all levels,

according to dr. hamid jafari, with the world health organization. >> government of india has, has funded the largest chunk of this program, you know up to $250 million each year which is unprecedented compared to other uh other countries. >> reporter: the government declared that any polio virus sighting be treated as a public health emergency. jafari says it allowed for vigorous surveillance and response. all reports of paralysis in children were investigated >> in 2011 nearly 60,000 cases of acute flaccid paralysis were reported and investigated and only one of those cases, the one that had onset on 13th of january we were able to isolate by polio viruses, virus. the other cases were due to non- polio causes of acute flaccid paralysis so that tells you how sensitive the, the um, surveillance system is... >> reporter: he says the big lesson from india for nigeria,

aghanistan and pakistan, three other countries where the virus is endemic, is that polio here became a huge, widely publicized national cause much more than a public health campaign. >> you're talking about community leaders, religious leaders, academic leaders, indian leaders, so it's getting really turning it into a sort of a national movement so that everybody feels that they are part of this, this movement. it's not only just the health department in that has to uh, deliver on this, and i think that's the kind of uh, tipping point. nigeria and pakistan, i mean these two countries have done a lot of good work and have made a lot of progress. it's what it's going to take to bring them to the tipping point where india is now. >> they say they next want to use the polio system teams to tackle other relatively neglected diseases like measeeling longer term the challenge is to build basic sanitation and education systems. things that can prevent

disease in the first place. >> sreenivasan: fred's reporting is a partnership with the under- told stories project at saint mary's university in minnesota. >> sreenivasan: as the united states and others prepare for next week's so-called "geneva two" talks aimed at bringing a political resolution to the conflict in syria. it's still uncertain whether the country's main opposition group will be attending. the western-backed umbrella "syrian national coalition" is currently meeting in istanbul to vote on whether it will go. joining me now to tell us more about the state of play and how the group's decision will affect peace prospects is chief foreign affairs correspondent margaret warner. she will be in switzerland covering the talks for us next week. so a full house or half at the party at the negotiate table not showing up. >> or if the talks take place. i just talked to somebody at this meeting an as you said, hari, they were supposed to meet, the syrian opposition council and national council

to decide today in istanbul whether to go. they -- even start meeting until 10 p.m. and that's a sign of the divisions inside. so i just talked about 45 minutes to remember who stepped up to take the call. who said we are in total disarray. they are having an argument right now for the last three hours about what constitutes a quorum, i said what. he said well a third of our members have walked out, the ones that represent the local governing boards on the ground. he said and another big chunk which is a different group which i won't-- i will spare you the acronym have said if the vote is to go then we're walking out. because we're opposed to going. sow said we'd be down to only half our members. now the group that walked out initially has promised to consider returning at 11:00 tomorrow. but he said we're going to have to debate. we would be down half our members, do we have to waive the quorum requirement or redefine it. >> what is the argument against going or attending at all. >> the argue for going is the main patrons the u.s. and europeans want us to go

and this is the way forward they sketched out. the arguments against it are one by sitting down with the syrian regime they say we legit peiz the syrian regime which we have insisted assad needs to go. two. as far as the syrian opposition has been told and the u.s. has said over and over, secretary kerry said it again today, the whole idea is this is based on this first geneva 1 convention he had had a year and a half ago, is to create a-- to begin creating a transitional governing body that would be without assad, to pave the way for a new kind of government. well, the syrian foreign minister put out a letter or it was leaked this week in which he accepted cumming but he did not accept that at all as the basis for it. he said it was just to discuss terrorism in syria which of course by which he means all the rebel groups. >> right. >> final luth opposition seers essentially go and be sold down the river because you've got russia really backing assad. an meanwhile they see the u.s. in their view as being almost too neutral.

and that they're just saying oh, why don't these parties sit down and have a conversation. and that the u.s. will be satisfied with smaller gestures like a partial cease-fire or humanitarian access. so there is a lot of resistance within the opposition but they may be walking into a trap. >> speak of that cease-fire, we're starting to report syria is making an offer. why would syria make an offer of a cease-fire or prisoner swap now? within i think you sum it up to russian pressure. secretary kerry and prime minister lavrov met in paris this week. they have yen going conversations all the time. and essentially secretary kerry urged him to lean on the hearings to do this. and the russians are playing the long game. they, it is sort of akin to when the russians persuaded assad or told assad it was time to give up his chemical weapons after that horrible attack last august. the russians understand, the world is looking on at the-- the starving children, the aerial bombardment, the

so-called barrel bombs. and that in a way by agreeing to partial cease-fire, to let some humanitarian aid in that it is worth taking a little of the heat off. >> were the rebels on the ground accept a cease-fire. >> that's a really good question. because first of all, let's say this nonfighting group that is meeting in istanbul goes and they at the same time urge the rebels to accept this, there's no guarantee the rebels on the ground will actually carry it out. i did refer to somebody here who is close to one of the fighting forces, there are many, many fighting forces who said they don't trust the way the syrian government uses cease-fires, but in the past what they've done is make a big declaration but then they have all kinds of conditions about where they allow the cease-fire, which a gets through and which aid doesn't. to the people in the area that aid gets through to, they have to surrender whatever autonomy they have. so they don't trust it. that said, this one person said to me, if assad agrees,

we can hardly say no because then we will look to the world like we're the obstructionist and the ones getting our own people's to be killed from overhead within considering there are all these different facs on the ground. who represents them at the table and if there is not that quorum, does the u.s. go anyway? >> great questions. one, even if this opposition group goes, they don't actually represent the fighting portions on the ground, and a lot of the fighting forces said they don't want a bunch of civilian exiles up there in geneva making a deal, all right. so one, they don't really represent the footing forces. and two, right now publicly and anyone i talk to privately the u.s. refuses to even accept the proposition that the opposition may not come. so secretary kerry has hinted even in public that if the opposition coalition doesn't come, the u.s. may or the europeans may wash their hands of them. he hasn't said it in so many ways.

but they are their main patrons and the u.s. has asked the saudis to use their pressure on this group. but i think we all have to hope that the administration does have a plan b just in case that happens. >> all right, margaret warner, thanks so much. >> sreenivasan: finally tonight, the analysis of brooks and marcus, but tonight we have a surprise host. >> ifill: that's right. judy's off, so i thought i'd sneak in for a little pre- washington week news analysis from brooks and marcus. that's new york times columnist david brooks and washington post columnist ruth marcus. mark shields is off tonight. so we get to play in their absence, so david today a very newsy week. today we saw the president's speech on privacy and surveillance and the nsa. did he go far enough? >> he went not far far-- very far. you know, he sort of said i feel your pain. you people who are worried about nsa surveillance.

you people who are worried about the invasion of privacy. i get it. i sort of see the argument. but ultimately the president represents institutions. and he gets a daily intelligence brief. he represents the intelligence community. and you could tell today that he basically is grateful to that community. basically has a great deal of faith in that community. and so he more or less sides with them on most issues, not on all issues but on most issues and hi think they till have a fair -- >> did he succeed in making the case that they are essential? >> i'm going to actually disagree with david here. and say that i think the president went significantly further than your either giving him credit for or acknowledging. and i think there are a lot of people in the intelligence community who are not happy with this outcome. it's-- he is, he always does these things in a very measured way. i see this argument. i see that argument. but in this case, he did a few things that are really important. first of all, he, my point of view, the most important

is that he brought the fisa court into the process of this metadata review. i'm a big proponent of judician review. i think that is a very big change. i think another, we don't know exactly how it's going to happen yet, another change i'm less convinced that it's essential and i'm also not convinced that it's doable is the thought of taking this metadata and taking it out of government hands, putting it back into private hands. i'm a little queasy about that given that target apparently can't keep my credit card data. i'm not sure if i-- look, there is a risk in the government having all this data. and to some extent, the nsa is apparently very unhappy with this idea. they kind of only have themselves to blame because they weren't clear enough about this program, transparent enough about what they were doing, willing to discuss it before edward snowden thrust it out into the open. but i do think that while the president certainly didn't do all the things that the civil liberties and privacy community wanted him to do, there are some pretty

big steps here and i haven't even listed them all. >> one of the things is he certainly was able to say we're not going to spy on our friends any more. >> right. and that i think there are two issues here. one is do we accord people who are not u.s. citizens, constitutional protections. and that i am qaezy about. but simply on the prudential matter of spying on our allies,. >> our foreign leaders. >> right. >> that was just stupid. and so whether we are extending rits or not, i don't care b it was as a matter for our own good t is just insulting to them. so there i think the gesture was absolutely right. more broadly it depends how we are grading how much he moved. if we are grading, he didn't go there. he want somewhere there, but he didn't go there. and i would say one thing is going to happen, fearless prediction, as the snooping technology gets better and better and better, people are going to get more and more nervous. the president's successful presidents are to the going to move, a as much because the intelligence community are beholden to them and we will have a clash. >> before that happens doesn't congress have to

play along with some of his ideas and have we seen that happening a lot? >> no. and this is a really complicated question. there are certain things that the president can do by executive order or fiat and just order there are other things like bringing these privacy advocates into the fisa court to a certain extent not as much as the panel recommended, but he is going to need congressional help on. and let's just think about how hard it is to get congress to agree on say a spending bill. we got one this week. that is going to be a very raucous debate. and it's going to be hard to do anything legislatively. david brings up another really interesting point about the president's suggestioning that he was going to treat non-u.s. citizens in some senses equivalently or at least level the playing field with the protections that u.s. citizens get. he wasn't very clear about how he is going to do that. and there is in all of these speeches a little bit of about i haven't really baked the cake and we'll figure it

out down the road quality. i think it is really important for all of to us keep the high on the ball as it really emerges. >> there is a lot of gitmo here. >> we haven't figured out how to do it. >> with appointing a panel. >> put them in gitmo. >> and in the end congress may decide they don't really want to go along with the plan, what we saw again this week. i want to move on to benghazi. the headline was benghazi, the uprising, the killing, the assault that took the lives of countries stevens and three other americans was preventable. so after looking at the report and what all sides had to say about it, was it? >> yes, you read the report and you want really to cry. because there is warning after warning afterwarning. you see the security situation in libya deteriorating. you see general-- of the african command offering repeatedly to chris stevens, do you want me to leave these forces with you to

protect you. and simultaneously the embassy is asking, stevens is saying no to that but simultaneously asking additional help from date. it is just a tragic moment of not just because the committee concluded it was preventable, but some of the ways in which it was preventable, we knew after the ems aboutee attacks back in the 90s. >> so if it could have been prevented, whose fault it that it wasn't? >> not hill rae clintons, to be fair. the political bottom line. >> secretary of state? >> yes, no, but this is an operational matter. are you not expecting, in my view, to be fair, the secretary of state is not in charge of something this frankly low level, this operational. she's in charge of the larger policy agenda. so i do not think if you want the political bottom line t will be a talking point in the campaign i'm sure, whether it be an effective one i'm eck treatmently dubious. >> this isn't the end of this discussion. >> well, i think it was closer to the end than the beginning. i think we're getting toward

the end of the whole thing. >> i think we're getting to the end of endlessly debating the talking points and word changes in the talking points. i don't think for the obvious reasons that we're getting to the end of the was hill rae clinton responsible debate though i agree with everything that david said about what the role of a secretary of state is. it's not to figure out what the security approximates ture of an outpost is. >> but how much of the keeping this alive, just politically, is about keeping weapons to wield against hillary clinton, "time" magazine this week had her on the cover or at leigh a leg that looked like her on the cover and the title was can anyone stop hillary. obviously benghazi is one of things they want to use to stop her. >> have we ever met a voter who will vote on benghazi, i really don't think so it is an issue. it is a thing. if she's going to be stopped in the primaries it's going to be because there is a challenge from the left which i think is a very plausible 20% possibility. and if she is going to be stopped in the general election it is just because

of health care. so you know, it's always important when you think of an election is just the two or three big issues. >> and the people without are going to rail about hillary clinton and dereliction of duty in benghazi, they're not her voters anyway. >> not only that, remember president giuliani may have been on the cover of a few magazines a couple of years ago. >> also in high heels. >> i looked at the times cover and i thought what took you so long, it's already january 2014, guys. >> two more years to go. okay let me talk to you a little bit about what happened in, with the iran negotiations. in fact, it seems like congress is digging its heels in on this idea of sanctions, an there may be enough votes to stop john kerry and his plan to come up with a deal. how serious is that? >> yeah, well if you think the kerry deal is the end all and be all of the greatest ago of diplomacy since i don't know,-- then are you in mourning because it is under some threat. i thought it was what kerry is doing is worth trying. but always had a very low probable of success and i think that is a view shared

by a lot of people doing the deal. and so i don't think it's a great threat. the iranians are not doing it because we made them feel good. they will doing it because the sanctions are actually working. i do buy the argument that a lot on capitol hill are making that to have an extra layer of sanctions, threat of sanctions, nasdaqiness from the u.s. actually does further the possibility which is remote that iran will to the get nuclear weapons. >> i think that the notion that sanctions are in the air, additional sanks are in the air, that iran has come to the table. if it leaves the table without having concluded a meal, i am a's going to torture this metaphor, that it's going to end up worse off than it was previously. is very healthy. so it's kind of good that there is a-- it would not be healthy i don't think. and i think some of the momentum for this is dissipating especially in the senate. it would not be healthy to have a new sanctions bill-pass even if it were one that would take affect only if everything blows up sick ponts from now. >> there were talks this week when senate democrats

went to the white house that the president had a a martini with an olive and was talking to them, obviously ryeing to get them to back away from this idea, is there anything he can do or say to senate democrats, members of his own party to make them not do this? >> please? maybe. >> what, he doesn't-- he-- doesn't scare them. they're mad at him for the health care debacle. can make an argument and i think look, this is a serious issue of foreign policy. this is sort of building a bridge and doing some pork spending. so i think he can make the argument and i think he did have some impact there. but not so much sort of do it for me, guys. >> chuck schumer is in leadership and he's got his position which is against the administration. >> this to the about oil. >> no,. >> before we go, i want to talk, we have seen what feels like a rash of retirements. at least three members of the house and today we hear senator tom could burn of oklahoma because of health reasons is stepping aside two years early.

is it a rash, an exodus or just typical. and does it matter? >> i think it's pretty typical. i think it doesn't matter in the sense of known of these retirements that we've seen in the last week or so are amount to tip the balance of power in either the house or the senate. i think it matters in the sense of we are having ending up with an extraordinarily inexperienced congress. people who haven't had a lot of time in office, don't know how the place works shall don't know each other, 46% of house republicans have been there for three years or less, 43 new senators since 2008. there is one of the newest, noneuous congressing. >> i don't know. >> that was good. >> thank you. >> save me from that, david. take it away. >> so let's talk about the-- the one time most george miller, house liberal, very liberal democrat. >> nancy pelosi's right hand. >> but most important, maybe the only member of the house who really understands education policy. and so a lot of human

capitol there. and sometimes taking votes on education policy very independent of what you think of as the liberal party line on that issue. and so what you are losing is people like that. for a bunch of newbies. >> tom coburn -- >> dr. nobody, you don't think that is a loss. >> no, just because i mentioned mark. >> no, so coburn is again, he has expertise on spending. he's got expert ease on health care. so you are losing, if you want term limits are you sort of getting de facto. and if you don't want term limits win which is the intelligent position, are you in a bit of mourning. >> okay, well, thank you both very much. i think you just got me warmed up. i am i'm headed over to washington week, where we'll tell you what really happened behind the scenes on all those topics and more, on air and on line. that's later tonight, right here on your pbs station. >> sreenivasan: again the major developments of the day. president obama laid out reforms

for government surveillance. he said the national security agency will no longer keep the phone meta-data it collects, and spying on allied leaders will end. the president also signed the omnibus spending bill to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year. and california jerry brown declared a drought emergency, amid the state's worst dry spell in 100 years of record-keeping. >> sreenivasan: on the newshour online right now, award season made it's way to atlanta on friday and the winners all wore fur. that's because they were recipients of the giant panda zoo awards. zoo atlanta twins may-loon and may-hwaan, born in july, shared the top award for panda cub of the year. see the rest of the winners, on our rundown. all that and more is on our website, newshour.pbs.org. tomorrow's edition of "pbs newshour weekend" looks at india's first mission to mars. and we'll be back, right here on monday with a look at: what is dark matter? miles o'brien explores one of the great unanswered questions of basic scientific research. that's the "newshour" for tonight. i'm hari sreenivasan, have a nice weekend.

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