captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> woodruff: the obama administration is weighing whether to add a new target to its drone campaign. and green-light a strike against an american citizen in pakistan suspected of plotting terrorist attacks. good evening, i'm judy woodruff, gwen ifill is away. also ahead, new concerns over the safety of the nation's electrical power grid and ideas to make it safer. plus, the story of the "tenderloin," san francisco's last working-class neighborhood. left behind while the rest of the city saw years of prosperity. >> why do you live in the tenderloin? >> why? because we're flushed into the

areas. this is where we have to survive to the best that we can. >> woodruff: 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: >> at bae systems, our pride and dedication show in everything we do; from electronics systems to intelligence analysis and cyber- operations; from combat vehicles and weapons to the maintenance and modernization of ships, aircraft, and critical infrastructure. knowing our work makes a difference inspires us everyday. that's bae systems. that's inspired work. >> i've been around long enough to recognize the people who are out there owning it. the ones getting involved, staying engaged. they are not afraid to question the path they're on. because the one question they never want to ask is, "how did i

end up here?" i started schwab with those people. people who want to take ownership of their investments, like they do in every other aspect of their lives. >> and the william and flora hewlett foundation, helping people build immeasurably better lives. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> woodruff: the new chair of the federal reserve bank signaled today she's largely keeping the policies of the man she replaced. janet yellen made her first public comments since taking over last week from ben

bernanke. she told a congressional hearing the fed will keep interest rates low, and gradually reduce stimulus efforts, as long as the economy improves. and, she played down the january drop-off in job creation. >> we have to be very careful not to jump to conclusions in interpreting what those reports mean. there were weather factors we've hawe've, unseasonably cold temperatures, temperatures that may be affecting economic activity in the job market and elsewhere. >> woodruff: yellen's testimony went over well on wall street. the dow jones industrial average gained nearly 193 points to close well over 15,994 the nasdaq rose almost 43 points to close at 4,191. some of the nation's leading tech firms joined an international protest today against u.s. government surveillance.

google, microsoft, facebook and others sent a letter to president obama and congress. they urged an end to collecting bulk data from internet communications and they call for greater oversight of surveillance programs. the house of representatives voted this evening to raise the national debt ceiling again-- with no strings attached. that came after republican leaders gave up on a different strategy. newshour congressional correspondent kwame holman has our report. >> let his party give him the debt ceiling increase that he wants. >> reporter: speaker john boehner gave way this morning to president obama's demand to raise the debt limit through march of 2015, minus any conditions sought by republicans. >> our members are not crazy about voting to increase the debt ceiling. our members are also very upset with the president. he won't negotiate. he won't deal with our long-term

spending problems without us raising taxes. >> reporter: boehner and his fellow leaders had hoped to add a provision reversing a cut in military pensions, but the republican rank and file reportedly balked. >> we'll let the democrats put the votes up. we'll put a minimum number of votes up to get it passed. >> reporter: as for the military pension issue, it will have to be dealt with in separate legislation. in the democratic-controlled senate, majority leader harry reid applauded the republican decision today. >> i hope this common sense approach will continue throughout the year so we can actually get some things done. boehner has said that he's going to pass a clean vote on not defaulting on the debt. if they do that i'm confident we will move over here as quickly as we can. >> reporter: later, there was word the senate might vote to raise the debt ceiling bill tomorrow. that would be well in advance of the february 27 deadline set by treasury secretary jack lew for congress to act, or risk having the federal government default.

>> woodruff: what forecasters call a potentially catastrophic winter storm was sweeping snow and ice into the deep south today. president obama declared a state of emergency for georgia. there, the storm threatened to drop a crippling layer of ice, knocking out power for days. supermarket shelves emptied in atlanta, although the city got mostly rain at first. airports from dallas to charlotte canceled almost 900 flights. >> woodruff: the u.s. may wait for the next president of afghanistan to sign an agreement leaving some u.s. troops there past 2014. so far, president hamid karzai has refused and today's "wall street journal" reports u.s. officials doubt he will ever change his mind. director of national intelligence james clapper confirmed as much today, telling a senate hearing: "i don't believe that president karzai is going to sign it." >> woodruff: the syrian peace talks made little apparent headway today in geneva.

in washington, president obama said the two sides are far from stopping the violence and reaching a political transition. still, after meeting with french president francois hollande, mr. obama said for now, at least, he does not see a military solution. -pblgtsdz we are continuing to explore ever possible avenue to solve this problem because it's not just heartbreaking to see what's happening to the syrian people, it's very dangerous for the region as a whole, including friends and allies and partners like lebanon or jordan that are being adversely impacted by it. >> woodruff: on a separate issue, the syrian ambassador to russia said the worst of syria's chemical weapons stockpile will be removed by march first. the assad regime already missed two deadlines. china and taiwan held historic talks today, and hailed a new chapter in their relations. envoys for the two sides met in the eastern chinese city of nanjing. it was their highest-level

session since the mainland came under communist rule in 1949. beijing still regards taiwan as a renegade province, but tensions have eased as trade between the two has grown. in the winter olympics in sochi, russia. it was a big day at snowboard and ski jump venues. a spoiler alert: tune out for a moment, if you don't want to know who won just yet. in the men's half-pipe, american shaun white lost his bid for a third gold, and failed to medal. a swiss snowboarder won. and germany's carina vogt won the olympics' first-ever women's ski jumping competition. shirley temple black, the darling of depression-era hollywood, died overnight at her home near san francisco. as shirley temple, she started dancing at the age of two and acting when she was only three. from 1935 to 1938, she was america's top box office draw, and even had an alcohol-free drink named after her.

her signature song, "on the good ship lollipop" came from the film "bright eyes." ♪ on the good ship lollipop ♪ on the good ship lollipop ♪ on the got ship lollipop ♪ it's a sweet trip to a candy shop ♪ where bonbons play ♪ on the sunny beach of peppermint bay ♪ the actress retired from the screen at the age of 21 and in later life, went on to republican politics and a diplomatic career, serving as ambassador to ghana and czechoslovakia. shirley temple black was 85 years old. still to come on the "newshour"; how the u.s. targets terrorists; a neighborhood left behind in san francisco's boom times; new worries over the safety of

america's power grid; plus, the book behind the new film "the monuments men." >> woodruff: in an unusually public exposure of an internal government debate, obama administration officials confirm they are deciding whether to target an american citizen living in pakistan, who is believed to be plotting terrorist attacks. the disclosure comes as the administration considers the extent of the president's powers and amid new revelations about the technology behind unmanned drones so often used to go after terrorists abroad. for more, we turn to mark mazzetti of the new york times, who wrote today's story about the american citizen abroad. he's also the author of "the way of the knife: the c.i.a., a secret army, and a war at the ends of the earth."

mark mazzetti, welcome back to the program. >> thanks for having me on. >> pelley: who is the person they're targeting and where is he or she? >> we don't know the answer to both questions. we don't know the identity of the person under discussion and as we reported the person is if pakistan and the assumption is that he is in the western part of pakistan in the mountain which is is traditionally out-of-bounds for the pakistani soldiers and for pakistani policemen and so that's why the obama administration the debating whether to kill him versus try to have the pakistanis capture him. >> woodruff: and what has he done to make him a potential target? >> again, that's a good question. there's been information in the last 24 hours that he was involved in attacks across the border in afghanistan using i.e.d.s and that would sort of put him in the category of someone who potentially could be targeted because as obama explained in may the united states will target only people

involved in ongoing attacks against americans. so for someone to be considered targeted -- to be targeted under the new rules they have to have some kind of a connection to attacks against americans and we believe it would be attacks against troops in afghanistan. >> woodruff: so what exactly is the debate going on? what's the argument inside the administration on each side of this? >> well, the real -- the biggest part of the debate is the fact that this person is an american citizen and there's this -- it's very rare and an extraordinary circumstance for a president to order the killing of an american citizen overseas and the four americans have been killed during the obama administration and as the administration admitted last year, only one they had deliberately tried to target. so if they are going to make the deliberate decision to kill an american citizen, they have to get a signoff from the justice department and they have to really be quite confident that this is the right decision to sort of deny this person the due process and so that's the center

of the debate. but there's other elements as well. since president obama announced these new rules and restrictions in may he announced a preference to have the military versus the c.i.a. carry out drone strikes. the rub here is that in pakistan it's an entirely c.i.a. operation. the pakistani government will not allow the military the to take over the mission because they want to still have the sort of veneer of secrecy that the c.i.a. provides. so there's a few different elements here that make this sort of a policy conundrum for the administration. >> woodruff: is this something -- isn't it unusual to have this debate out in the open like this? >> yeah, sure. and it's been apparently going on for months but it only kind of -- we got a glimpse of it last week when mike rogers, the republican chairman of the house intelligence committee, really lit into the new rules that president obama laid out in may when he basically said the rules

are so restrictive it's making america less safe and people who were once able to be targeted cannot be targeted under the new rules. so then so then a little less than a week later it emerged what rogers was really talking about was in part the debate over this one individual. >> woodruff: so it's been going on for months doesn't it risk alerting the enemy that they're going to be targeted? >> well, i think fact that it's been going on for months probably indicates that there's really a split over whether this would be worth it and whether this person is even someone important enough and dangerous enough to be targeted. there was very little debate inside the obama administration about anwar al-awlaki, the first american citizen to be killed during the obama administration. there appears to be far greater debate about this individual. i think that it also should be pointed out that it's still very difficult to know here we are almost a year later since the new rules were put in place. how the rules are being put into

place. what the ground ruleses are. whether the rules are being followed. there's still so much secrecy involved in these programs. there has not been a great deal of transparency since president obama announced these new rules in may and so it's hard to really judge as an outsider what is different now than it was before may of last year. >> pelley: mark, do you get the sense that the administration is close to making a decision on this or that this could go on for some time? >> it's hard to know. certainly -- i'm sure they were not happy to have this aired out in public that the internal workings of the debate are reported in the press so certainly this could go on for some time their argument was that this person might go to ground but as we have pointed out, president obama has made no secret of the fact that he will target remnants of al qaeda or al qaeda affiliates in pakistan so it would not necessarily be a

huge surprise to this individual that the united states might be going after him. >> woodruff: one other quick thing. there's a report at whether the president has the authority to expand targeting to al qaeda affiliated groups to so-called isis, the iraq/al qaeda in iraq and syria now that al qaeda central has split off from that group. it's a little bit complicated, but tell us in a nutshell what that's about and where it's headed? >> well, it's an interesting debate because basically it goes back to the authorities that were instituted right after 9/11 when congress gave the president broad authority to go -- basically go get the people responsible for 9/11. here we are so many years later and those responsible for 9/11 are largely either captured or killed and al qaeda as they existed on september 11, 2001, is very different and has different splinter groups so the question that now is presented

is, is a group -- this group isis that now at least formally is no longer aligned with al qaeda, you know, does the president have the authority to go after them? as the one story today acknowledged it's a little bit of an academic debate because we don't think there's a huge momentum in the obama administration to start doing lethal strikes in syria or iraq to take on this group but it does get to the issue of, you know, what are the authority eugauthoritiesgoing to be goingw that we're out of the post-9/11 age in this era where the threat is far different where it was so many years ago. >> woodruff: following it all. mark mazzetti with the "new york times." thank you. >> thank you. >> woodruff: american cities often wrestle with re-developing blighted areas, since long-time residents are often displaced in the process. there's a seamy neighborhood in san francisco, called the tenderloin, that's resisting

change right now, despite a high tech boom that could upgrade the area. special correspondent spencer michels has our story, co- produced with public station k.q.e.d. san francisco. >> reporter: no one is sure where the tenderloin got its name, but it has been the soft underbelly of san francisco for decades: drug dealing and drunks, prostitution, the homeless and mentally ill, troubled veterans and impoverished new immigrants. 28,000 people live in the 40 square block area in single room occupancy hotels and dingy apartments. the neighborhood is adjacent to the city's affluent booming downtown with its expensive hotels, upscale shops and well-attended theaters. judy young, executive director of the vietnamese youth development center, moved into the tenderloin from an asian refugee camp in 1981.

>> i was eight years old and we lived in this crappy one bedroom -- i think it was haunted, apartment. and there was like six of us to a one bedroom. and the neighborhood was the worst you could ever find. >> reporter: 4,000 children still live in the neighborhood and more than 30 years later the downtrodden still line up for free meals at st. anthony's dining hall in the heart of the tenderloin. >> families do live here because it is one of the most affordable place in the city. people don't realize how high the housing is in san francisco. and so if you can find a studio or one bedroom here now for $1200, that's pretty affordable compared to other places. >> reporter: but now a new wave of tech enterprises are moving into the city and nearby silsilicon valley, bringing with them well-paid workers who can afford to live in newer more upscale digs and patronize

pricey bars and restaurants. twitter, with 2,000 employees, recently opened its new headquarters just across the street from the tenderloin. and that's brought in a few new businesses and put pressure on the city to clean up the area. i've spent most of my life in and around san francisco and i've seen lots of changes, but somehow the tenderloin seems to have avoided that change. it's still not a pleasant place but it's home for the poor. many other cities have had places like the tenderloin but they've redeveloped them. somehow, the tenderloin has resisted that. one reason san francisco has not redeveloped the tenderloin is the city's experience in the largely african american neighborhood called the fill mortar or western addition. in the 1960s, the city declared the area blighted and essentially bulldozed it into oblivion, forcing thousands of blacks to move out of the city. critics called it "black

removal." san francisco magazine editor gary camilla says it was a huge mistake. >> the destruction of the western addition many the name of urban renewal, probably the greatest sin in the history of san francisco. >> reporter: with this in mind, the city's supervisors passed zoning laws and rent control designed to make it nearly impossible to displace the tenderloin's population by upgrading the housing stock, turning residential hotels into more lucrative tourist lodgings, and pricing out the poor. even in the midst of the nearby tech revolution. randy shaw is long-time director of the tenderloin housing clinic, a nonprofit in the neighborhood. he says those laws help preserve a place where people could afford to live-- the working poor included. >> the tenderloin has been for the last really almost 100 years a working class neighborhood and now it's become san francisco's last working class neighborhood and the last it will ever have because it's the one neighborhood in san francisco that cannot be gentrified for a

number of reasons-- land use protection, zoning protections, rent controls and a unique housing stock which has no single family homes. >> reporter: but camilla thinks something has to change in the tenderloin. in his recent book "cool gray city of love" he claims that nonprofits like shaw's and other progressive forces have impeded progress and created a museum of depravity in the tenderloin. >> san francisco is very left leaning, the nonprofits have a very strong political base in the city. to simply taken a undesirable population and go warehouse them somewhere is, you know, extremely problematic. so there's kind of a -- there's an understandable reason to not want to make a dramatic change in the tenderloin. >> reporter: in the middle of our interview, we were interrupted by one resident, a man who called himself "dirty ray." why do you live in the tender stphroeupb. >> because we're flushed into the areas. this is where we have to survive to the best that we can. >> reporter: camilla

understands that point of view, but he blames the nonprofits that own or operate much of the tenderloin housing. he says they have an interest in keeping things as they are. >> what the nonprofits want to do is maintain their stake here. this is where they have their structures, they own or lease dozens of buildings and thousands of people are housing and supported here. they're being part of the solution, but ironically, they're also part of the problem. the city is very loathe to step in and say "let's sweep this all away. let's move it somewhere else." >> reporter: but shaw denies the charges and says he has worked hard to get rid of crime in the area. what about the nonprofits? do they have a stake and they want to keep things the way they are? >> no, that's absolutely false. nobody has spent more time than me trying to reduce crime in the tenderloin. the problem has been that the police allow active ties to go on in the tender loin they don't allow in other neighborhoods.

>> you've got to get off the sidewalk. >> reporter: for their part, the police say they devote plenty of resources to the tenderloin with frequent street patrols and a special unit housed here. but according to captain jason chernis, the basic problems here are not law enforcement issues. >> public safety doesn't belong to the police. public safety belongs to cooperation between the police and the community. if the environment is comfortable for drug dealers and drug trafficking, removing that drug dealer is only going to take that one drug dealer off the street, but the environment is still standing. >> reporter: as for why the cops don't make more arrests? >> if you're not used to seeing people who are mentally ill who don't smell good who are incontinent who talk to themselves, those are things that could scare you, yes. but we don't criminalize homelessness in san francisco. >> reporter: meanwhile, san francisco is changing rapidly, other older, modest neighborhoods are gentrifying, with the poor residents moving

out as prices rise. so far that hasn't happened to the tenderloin, which raises a thorny question that compassionate-but-upscale san francisco must answer: how do you clean up a drug-infested, crime-ridden area without displacing the unfortunate population that lives there? >> woodruff: now, just how vulnerable is the united states' electrical power grid? it's a question getting new attention after the wall street journal published a detailed account of an organized sniper attack on an electrical substation near san jose, california last april. shortly before 1:00 a.m., someone cut telephone cables near the substation. about a half hour later, multiple gunmen quickly fired dozens of shots at 17 transformers inside the perimeter of the station. fifteen minutes later,

transformers began to fail. but officials managed to avoid serious disruptions by re-routing power the shooters escaped before police arrived and have not been caught. the chairman of the federal energy regulatory commission at the time of the attack, jon wellinghoff, has described it as the most serious domestic terror attack on the grid. yesterday, i recorded a two-part conversation about this incident, starting with wellinghoff. jon wellinghoff, thank you for being here. how much of a concern is this to you, what happened last april? >> well, thank you judy. i appreciate the opportunity to be here. it's a great concern to me because this does evidence that there are individuals out there who have the capability to plan and carry out a very sophisticated attack on our nation's grid and so given that knowledge and given the fact that we have some very vulnerable aspects to that grid, we need to step up our efforts

to protect it. >> woodruff: what made this particular station vulnerable? >> well, it's not any different than multiple other stages. it's a high-voltage transformer station that transforms power from generating stations to the transmission lines. it is really very much like numbers of others, 100 or so other very high voltage ones around the country that has very little protection. it's only protected by a chain link fence and in some instances some video cameras and light internal to the station. other than that, it's very open to attack and this was attackd from the outside. they didn't even get through the chain link fence, they actually shot through the fence from 40 to 60 yards outside of the facility. >> woodruff: why did you call it a terrorist attack? >> well, i don't think there's any need to have any particular label on it. what the facts are, though, is

the issue of, in fact, you had individuals who purposely attacked a station and did so with a very, very detailed plan that they then turned over to individuals who were extremely well trained and knew exactly what they were doing. so regardless of who the individuals were, we know now that there are people with these kinds of capabilities who can carry out this type of an attack on what is a very vulnerable part of our grid. >> woodruff: when you say they were "well trained," what does that tell you about what this attack represents? does that mean they had to study this station? hay had to study the grid? what does it mean? >> they definitely had to study this station. they -- in fact it appears set up targeting positions prior to them arriving at the station so they had somebody come out ahead of time and determine exactly where to set up and shoot. they also had to determine where the 911 cable was, the fiber

optic cable that they cut prior to going in the station to reduce the number of 911 calls. so they had a number of specific pieces of information they pieced together. they also knew exactly where to target on this station. they, in fact, targeted the cooling fins on these high-voltage transformers rather than hitting the transformers or their glass bushings. so they knew that in targeting those cooling fins they could start the oil to leak out of the fins, cause those tra +*pbsz formers to have to shut off but industrial plenty of time to get away, as they did. >> woodruff: and yet, it's been pointed out as we said that power was not lost to people, to folks who use power in the area. does that say something about the resiliency of the power grid? >> well, i'm not sure it's so much resiliency or luck as to the time that this attack took place. it took place during a very low-level load time where there wasn't a lot of power being

used. it was in the spring and at night. so those are the times when the least amount of power is being used and the least stress on the system. if the attack had taken place, for example, in the middle of summer in a very high-power usage time there might have been a different result, number one. number two, they actually missed three transformers here in the substation. those three transformers were able to keep up the entire silicon valley area. without those transformers there would have been a black out ultimately and, again, there could have been blackouts if it had been during the summer. so i'm not sure it's a testament to resilience as it was a testament to just luck and circumstances. >> woodruff: how worried should all of us be about the vulnerability of this nation's electrical grid, power grid? >> i think we should be extremely worried because, in fact, there are a limited number of high voltage transformer substation nodes within the country and a coordinated attack, physical attack on those nodes could do us a great deal of damage, including causing

massive blackouts across the country. and those nodes are currently not being pro teched in any way other than, as they say, primarily a chain link fence. there's no guards 24/7. there's no obscuring of the targets with inside and there's also very little protection around those targets. >> woodruff: but some steps have been take on the harden these other substations, haven't there been, since this happened? >> there may have been some steps taken, but they have not been extensive yet. i've briefed a number of utility executives, i know they're taking this very seriously. we can't put blame on the executives. i think they are taking this as seriously as they can but we have to understand this is not a problem for individual utilities, this is a national problem because, in fact, there are national consequences to these blackouts and so it has to be something that should be undertaken by congress and the straeus. >> so what needs to be done? can this kind of an attack be prevented in the future?

>> the risk can be reduced substantially. you can never prevent someone from trying to attempt an attack but you can do simple things like make the fences around the station's make so you can't see through them. beef tune camera security and put physical concrete barriers in front of transformers like they do in areas overseas where they have critical infrastructure facilities. there's a number of things that can be done and i know things are moving forward but ultimately we need an agency in the separation to be given the authority like the n.r.c., the nuclear regulatory commission has authority over security at power plants, nuclear power plants. we need to have a similar type authority over these grid stations. >> woodruff: it certainly managed to get all of our attention. we thank you, jon wellinghoff. >> thank you, judy. >> woodruff: for a second view, we turn to mike

weatherford from the department of homeland security during the obama administration. he's also served as a chief of security for the north american electric reliability corporation which was formed by the power industry to guarantee the reliability of bulk power. he's now with the chertoff consulting group and we welcome you to the program. you just heard mr. wellinghoff say he's very concerned about this. how concerned are you? >> i'm concerned as well. i think probably the biggest issue here is that we have focused an awful lot the past couple years on cyber security within the electricity industry and this incident is an example of maybe we're focusing on the wrong thing when a physical attack was able to do this kind of damage. >> we talked about it. at one point he had called this domestic terrorist attack, the worst of its kind on the power grid. do you consider it the same thing?

>> well, certainly chairman had access to and briefed in much more detail than i have and i am not in the law enforcement game so i wouldn't presume to call it a terrorist event. i just don't have enough information to do that. it's certainly something concerning. it is something that was focused. i think it was targeted, it was well planned out. so it wasn't just a couple of guys deciding to go off and shoot a couple rounds at a substation. >> which you were telling us sometimes happens around the country but this was in a much larger scale. so what does it say to you about how worried all of us should be about the power grid? >> well, i don't know that i would say worry. one of the things the chairman mentioned was that we can never mitigate our risk down to zero. i mean, we're not going to live in a risk-free environment. but what we can do is we can apply some mitigation steps to

some of these substations and to some of the other facilities around the country. the power companies, the utility industry is devoting a lot of resources to this already as the chairman said, to hardening the substations, to putting up barriers. and there's a lot of new technologies out there that are providing new capabilities for linking the people and the technology components of these remote substations. and that's -- you can imagine, that's a challenge. there's about 45,000 of these substations around the country. obviously some in more critical areas than others. many in rather rural areas and some in very urban areas. >> woodruff: he didn't say this on camera but i know my colleagues in talking to him earlier today, he pointed out there may be thousands of substations around the country but he said they're much smaller number that are vulnerable in the way that this station was in

california. >> well, i wouldn't say -- they're not more vulnerable but more critical to the bulk power system because of the location where they are. this metcalf substation obviously was in a very sensitive and critical location but i think as you pointed out in the interview, it speaks to the reliability of the bulk power system that the operators and the system was able to continue without really even the lights blinking. no one even knew that the event had happened. >> woodruff: didn't he say that was mainly because it was spring, there was not a high demand for power at that time of year? >> so, i think those are factors, but i don't necessarily agree with him on the entire concept there because the bulk power system is designed to be able to absorb these kinds of incidents and events. substations go off line i won't

say all the time but it happens. it happens during nature events. it happens during other kinds of events. they go offline and typically the system heals itself without people even knowing about it. >> woodruff: what about his final point that this is something that the federal government needs to get involved in, that congress needs to pay attention to, national regulatory attention. he talked about some of the things that needed to be done to harden these sites but essentially his point was this the country, the government, needs to focus on this much more than it has been. >> there are a few things i think the government should do. i always get a little anxious when we start thinking about more regulation. this is an industry that's already very regulated. but there are a few things that can be done. you know, there's certainly better information sharing between the government and the private sector is always going to be something i think that the government can do more of. one of the things i think that would help a lot and that is if

the government could work with the state public utilities commissions and help the state p.u.c.s understand this issue better because there's a bit of a gap right now, a bit of a divide between what the federal government is doing and what the 48 b.u.c.s in the continental united states are doing. >> woodruff: we appreciate it. we thank you for coming in. mark weatherford, thank you. >> thank you, judy. >> woodruff: schools nationwide are implementing new shared standards in math and reading, but what about for the arts? are those required to be taught, as well? the newshour's special correspondent for education, john merrow, looked at those questions recently. here is an encore of his report. >> reporter: most public schools in the united states offer some sort of music instruction.

but, according to a federal government report, about four million elementary school students do not get instruction in the visual arts. 96% of public elementary schools these grim numbers contradict what most states say about the arts. 46 states require that the arts be taught in elementary school, including north carolina, which mandates that every student receive equal access to art instruction. it's a law that does not seem to be enforced. jones county, in rural north carolina, serves 1200 students, most from low income families. while its four elementary schools do offer music

instruction once a week, not one offers instruction in dance, theater or art. >> every year we kind of joke about it and we ask, "oh are we getting an art teacher this year?" i mean, i was hired into this county probably ten years ago. and i cannot remember having an elementary art teacher. >> reporter: with no art teacher on staff, principal jimmi parker of maysville elementary has had to rely on local talent. >> we do our best. we have volunteers come in. all kinds of artists live in our area. >> reporter: these 6th graders remember when a professional artist came to their school for a month. >> i liked the work we did with her, when we did the shadows with the trees. >> reporter: unfortunately, that was three years ago, when these students were in the third grade. >> reporter: would you like to have more art? >> yes >> reporter: two hours west of jones county, the picture is very different. like maysville, bugg elementary school in raleigh serves mostly low income families.

but unlike maysville, bugg has four full time, certified arts teachers, in dance, music, the visual arts and theatre. i asked these 5th graders how many minutes of the arts they have in a week. >> during the week, the calculation would be? >> ummm..about 9 hours. >> i'd say about 15 hours >> i would say around 10 hours a week. >> reporter: okay. so we've got seven and a half, ten, nine, 15 >> i love the idea that the kids couldn't fully answer that >> reporter: michael armstrong is principal at bugg elementary. >> they definitely have 45 minutes a day with a true, trained arts teacher.

and then because all of our staff are trained in the arts that will bleed over into more time. >> i'm going to turn into the beanstalk now and i want you to understand the beanstalks side of the story. >> reporter: first grade teacher maria eby is using the story of jack and the beanstalk to teach drama and science. >> we are studying plants and what they need and what they give and how they relate to the world. >> what are three things that plants do for us? >> they give us food. >> they give us food, like beans. >> and then the drama part of it, they had to improvise as that character. >> you are the old lady that gave them the beans but then why did you let him in the castle? >> reporter: what's the goal, do kids learn more? >> well, children all learn in different ways and its our job to make sure were presenting things in different ways. >> reporter: but nobody said dress up like a beanstalk. >> nobody made me do that, no. that was my own free will. >> reporter: this school feels rich.

>> yeah. >> reporter: are you? >> not at all. there's two parts to that. the money is one part, mindset is another whole thing. so if you really believe that the arts are of power, that alone, can have an impact. and if you don't have that mindset, then i don't think there's enough money in the world to pay for a strong enough arts program. >> reporter: but money makes a difference. bugg elementary is what's known as a magnet school. magnet schools receive additional resources to attract a diverse student body. bugg gets an extra $406 per child, nearly $250,000 a year. principal armstrong spends much of that money on the arts, and says he has watched his students thrive. >> students that have been in this program from kindergarten to fifth grade have a higher self-confidence, have a higher understanding of how they learn, and are actually making higher test scores. >> reporter: in contrast, instead of the arts, jones county has focused its efforts

on improving math and reading instruction. over the past few years, both schools have improved, although maysville elementary has outperformed bugg on most state tests. this year the mindset in jones county seems to be changing. the district hired an elementary art teacher. at maysville elementary, cindy odaniel teaches 7 art classes, back to back, with just one break and no time between classes to set up, or clean up. >> reporter: i was looking at your schedule on the wall, looks like a pretty hectic day >> we move quickly but the 45 minutes is a better time slot to get something accomplished. i have other schools that its 30 minutes so its hurry up and start, hurry up and finish. >> reporter: one of her classes is actually two kindergarten classes combined. >> daniel: ok guys, so hurry up we are running out of time

>> it is organized chaos and its tough to get around to all the students in a regular class size in 45 minutes. and maysville is not her only school. >> reporter: many schools do you teach in? >> four >> reporter: how many kids do you work with? >> i haven't slowed down long enough to figure it out >> reporter: nationwide, nearly half of elementary school art teachers work in more than one school. i asked these students at bugg how they'd feel about having only 45 minutes of art a week >> i guess if i'd never been in this school to start with, i would think it's normal. but now that i'm here, i realize if i were to go to another school and it only has 45 minutes of art, i would not feel like it's a real school. >> i would love for it to be every other day. i would like them to have more time to think, more time to absorb, to assess information, instead of hurry up, hurry up, clean up, time is running out.

>> reporter: do the kids at your school get enough art? >> no. they still don't get enough art >> reporter: how much is enough? >> i guess enough would be when the kids are satisfied. when we ask them, "do you get-- enough art?" and they can say, "yes, i feel like i have art in everything i do every day." it might not ever reach that point. but when they tell us they're getting art, that will be enough. >> reporter: you're a ways from there. >> a long ways from there. a long ways. >> reporter: in 2014 a coalition of arts organizations will release new standards for the arts. but it will be up to each state to decide whether to adopt and enforce them. since john's piece first aired, a draft version of those standards has been released and the public comment period on them begins on friday.

>> woodruff: finally tonight, a new film explores the theme of war and art, the quest to save great works of art during world war two. jefrey brown recently sat down with the author of the book that the movie is based on. >> brown: it was systematic looting on a huge scale: nazis targeting art works from all over europe. one response came from a small and in many ways unlikely group that came to be called the monuments men. robert edsel told their story in his 2009 book by that name. he continued the tale in "saving italy" which came out last year and he joins us now. welcome. >> thank you, jeff. >> brown: for those who don't know, remind us, what were the monuments men? >> this is a group of middle age museum directors, curators, art historians, men and women who walked away from having life made. many had families, some had kids and they put on a military uniform to become a new kind of soldier during world war ii, one charged with saving rather than

destroying. it was an incredible effort, never been done before or since and their efforts in saving some five million cultural objects from theft and destruction during world war ii stands. >> brown: because the scale of the looting, as i said, was quite, quite -- it was systematic and huge. >> it was. and we live with the altered legacy today because there's still hundreds of thousands of cultural treasures missing. our effort with the monuments men foundation continues to try and illuminate the path home for some of these missing objects. >> brown: i refer to them as an unlikely group. tell us a little bit about some of the individuals. >> well, you have kind of the father of the idea, george stout, who's a pioneer in the conservation of works of art who works at the harvard fogg museum. stout's so old he fought the last year of world war i and has the vision to see that the united states is going to be drawn into another war and the great risk being that in the process of trying to defeat naziism we di industry to so much of western civilization's heritage unintentionally. so he pursue this is idea. it includes people like jim roarmer who becomes the sixty

director of metropolitan museum of art. lincoln kerr and seen the, the founder of the new york city bali and one of the great heroinheroins of world war ii, n who worked for four years under the eyes of the gnat cyst keeping information and records of their looting activities. >> brown: we refer to systematic looting. how systematic were they able to be? they were feeling their way to figure this out. right? >> at the beginning the focus wasn't as art detectives as it later would become it was to try and prevent allied damage to churches and monument. brown pwaoup from aerial bombings, because that's important to say, right? this isn't just about the combat, the ground war. this is about aerial bombings. >> and in "saving italy" i start the book off describing how british bombs landed 88 feet away from the building housing leonardo da vinci's "last summer" and the roof collapses and the paintin painting is expo the elements for almost two years before it can be reassembled to very, very close call in the case of something we all know about.

>> brown: so you document -- there are a lot of successes. where -- what did they succeed at? what were they not able to do? >> well, i think the monuments officers succeeded in so many ways. i mean, these are men and women that weren't just sitting in an office some way, they were in combat, two officers were killed in northern europe in the process of trying to recover works of art. i suppose the biggest mistake or shortcoming was that the army wanted to get out of this restitution business and wanted to close down their effort. a cold war was upon us and we know today from recent announcements and ongoing discoveries, some not so dramatic, that there are still many, many works of art and cultural treasures missing and it's one of the on going legacies we're trying to solve. >> brown: you've written two books on this. i know you've devoted a lot of your life in many years, what was it like to see it put on film? made into a film? >> it's a "pinch me" moment. you have a hope that at some point in time others will see the bigness of this story and the great dramatic element to it

to make a feature film of it. it seems remarkable all these years after the war with the whole history of world war ii movies that we have that no one's taken on the telling of this heroic group of men and women and the role that hay had. george clooney to his great credit and grant heslov, his business partner, that has vision to see it is a dramatic story and george thinks no small thoughts. they were willing to tackle it and invest three years of their life in bringing it to the big screen. >> brown: let me ask you finally the problem of culture at risk or harm in wars has not gone away. we're watching in the syria, many places. >> absolutely. you report on it regularly. syria, mali, cairo to other day, the effort to blow up the egyptian police office ends up damaging the islamic museum. so this is a problem that we're going to have to live with and i think in the past, the history of the monuments officers and one of the reasons to honor their legacy is to reestablish the high bar for protection of

cultural treasures and the lesson wes need to know in the future are e side there in the past. >> brown: robert edsel is author of "the monuments men" and "saving italy." thank you so. >> woodruff: now a rare inside look at the conflict in syria between rebel groups there. tonight's edition of frontline shows how the islamic state of iraq and syria, known as isis, is brutally enforcing strict sharia law in northern syria. in this excerpt, a commander in the more moderate armed opposition leads an attack on a compound believed to be inhabited by members of isis. one of the fighters film it is battle.

(speaking arabic) >> a sniper covers the rebels as they advance. >> he and his men move in. >> when they get inside, the base is empty.

the surviving isis fighters have fled. (shouting) >> woodruff: frontline's "syria's second front" airs on most p.b.s. stations this evening. >> woodruff: again, the major developments of the day. the new federal reserve chair, janet yellen, told congress she'll largely continue the policies of the man she replaced, ben bernanke. wall street responded to yellen with big gains. the house voted this evening to raise the national debt ceiling. and a major winter storm swept into the south with snow and ice. and longtime nbc news anchor tom brokaw announced he has been diagnosed with cancer, but he says he is optimistic about treatment. on the newshour online right now, the tech savvy among us have been using online privacy tools for years, but how can software developers help the everyday internet user protect their data? we went to a hack-a-thon in washington, d.c., to find out. watch that video on our homepage. all that and more is on our web site, newshour.pbs.org.

and that's the newshour for tonight on wednesday. i'm judy woodruff, we'll see you on-line and again here tomorrow evening. for all of us here at the p.b.s. newshour, thank you and good night. ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. >> and by the alfred p. sloan

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this is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and susie gharib. brought to you in part by -- >> the street.com. founded by jim cramer, the street.com is an independent source for stock market analysis. cramer's action alerts plus service is home to his multimillion dollar portfolio. you can learn more at the street.com/nbr. surgeon the street. stocks have their best four-day streak in almost two yeaas the fed chief puts investors in a buying mood. moving forward, the house votes to extend the nation's borrowing limit without the political drama of last year. can investors breathe a sigh of relief? food stocks fried. con-agra and dean foods warn of tough times ahead sending shares