captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> woodruff: good evening. i'm judy woodruff. gwen ifill is away this week. on the newshour tonight: louisiana under water-- at least six are dead and 20,000 rescued0 from flooding, as ongoing rains threaten more damage.da also ahead: hillary clinton and donald trump sharpen their focus on key battleground statestl as trump's campaign chief is alleged to have accepted secret cash payments from pro-russian ukraine. and syria's hospitals become killing groundds as airstrikes target the few medical facilities left in that ravaged country. >> when you target a hospital, you don't just destroy the brick and mortar structure.

you destroy actually a safe place where people can go for life saving aid. >> woodruff: all that and more on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. .

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>> and with the ongoing support of these institutions: and individuals. >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. u. >> woodruff: swathes of southern louisiana are still underwater after a weekend of historicen flooding. at least six people died and l thousands had to leave their homes. as far as the eye could see, there was water. the rising floodwaters took mant in louisiana by surprise. whole neighborhoods were submerged and more than 20,000

people were forced to evacuate. by today, many had managed toed make it to makeshift shelters on higher ground. >> my house was underwater. i have three children, my sister lives in the sherwood forest area, she was on top of her roof and she has five children. >> it was pretty scary because we didn't know how high theid waters were gonna rise. or how fast they were gonna f rise, we just gotta out of there before it was too late. >> woodruff: since friday, the state has been battered by an onslaught of torrential rain. in baton rouge and the surrounding area, the amite river surged to more than 40su feet. lafayette and its suburbs were inundated as well. louisiana governor john bel edwards visited lafayette parish today. >> we're going to transition into a recovery phase as we can here. we're going to make every bit of assistance available to you as soon as possible as we can ands that's my commitment as governor. >> woodruff: rescue operations r

are still underway and crews worked all weekend to pull stranded victims from their homes. others rescued trapped drivers as water surged into their carsr it's unclear when evacuees will be allowed to go home. more than 10,000 people are being housed in local shelters. others are relying on the kindness of their neighbors.ne >> they are the most kind amazing people ever. i owe them so much. >> woodruff: louisiana's insurance commissioner estimates 75% of those affected by the flooding do not have flood insurance. turning to the campaign for thea white house, the candidates took to key swing states. taking aim at our nation's security, while slamming shots at each other. lisa desjardins reports. >> reporter: to the campaign battleground of youngstown,un

ohio, donald trump brought his outline of a more protective america, generally less involved overseas but more focused on fighting the islamic state. >> if i become president, era of nation building will be brought to a very swift and decisive end. >> reporter: the republican nominee outlined three broad points: he would hold joint military operations with any country fighting isis-- the campaign confirmed that could include current u.s. adversary and syrian leader bashar al- assad. he would ask law enforcement here to find new ways to i.d. radicals. and he would freeze immigration from regions where background checks are too difficult, while adding a new test. >> the time is overdue to develop new screening test forde the threats we face today. i call it extreme vetting. i call it extreme-- extremeem vetting. our country has enough problems,

we don't need more. and these are problems like we've never had before. >> reporter: hillary clintons campaign responded before thegn speech with this ad attacking trump's national securityur credentials with his own words. >> putin did call me a genius. >> his comments are offensive, they're unsetting. >> reporter: the anti-trump theme dominated as clinton took the stage in scranton, pennsylvania with native son and vice president joe biden. >> i was proud! my son beau served for a year in iraq, came back highly decorated soldier. i must tell you, i must tell you, had donald trump been president, i would have thrown my body in front of him. no, i really mean it.al to keep him from going if the judgement was based on trump's decision. >> reporter: clinton repeated her attack on trump's preparedness. >> sometimes he says won't tell anyone what he'll do because he wants to keep his plans

"secret." and then it turns out secret is he has no plan. and that was very clear when he said, "i know more about isis than the generals." no, no, donald, you don't. >> reporter: for weeks both candidates have insisted the other is not fit to be president, with 85 days until the election day, that question is dominating the campaign trail. for the pbs newshour, i'm lisa desjardins >> woodruff: in the day's other news: an 18-year-old was shot and seriously injured, after a second night of protests in a milwaukee neighborhood. it followed the fatal police shooting of sylville smith, a black man authorities say was carrying a stolen handgun.to dozens of officers clashed with protesters overnight, and four sheriff's deputies were wounded. milwaukee's mayor blamed outsiders for the unrest, and called for calm. >> we have issues in this city. we know there are issues. there's too much poverty, there are housing issues, there'sus

public safety issues, there areh education issues. none of those issues get addressed if your intent is to inflict property or personal damage in this great neighborhood. >> woodruff: no major property damage was reported last night, unlike the previous night when six businesses were torched. officials also said they'll nowh strictly enforce the city's 10:00 p.m. curfew for teenagers. in nepal, 33 people are dead after their bus plunged off a mountain road, careening almost a hundred feet down a hillside. the bus had departed from kathmandu, and crashed about 50 miles east of the capital city. at least 28 more people were injured, some critically. victims were airlifted back tore hospitals in kathmandu. an air strike sent a doctorse without borders hospital in northern yemen today. the exact death toll wasn'tth

immediately clear, but yemeni officials said there were some 20 casualties among hospital patients and staff. a saudi arabian-led coalition has been bombing rebel targets in the country, for more than a year. back in the u.s., a wildfire spanning more than six squareni miles is burning out of control north of san francisco. more than 4,000 people in and around the rural town of lowernd lake have been forced to evacuate. the fire first broke out saturday, and has since destroyed at least 175 structures. it's one of 11 major fires burning across california right now. major hotel chains in ten states and the district of columbia have been hit by hackers. malware was installed on the payment processing systems of 2g different hyatt, sheraton, marriott, and westin properties- - as far back as march 2015. the company that manages the hotels insists the security breach has been contained.

there's no immediate word how many customers were affected. a banner day on wall street: all three major stock indexes closee at record highs, driven in part by gains in the chemical and mining sectors. the dow jones industrial average climbed more than 59 points to close at 18,636. the nasdaq rose 29 points, and29 the s&p 500 added six. and, at the summer olympics: u.s. gymnast laurie hernandez g won silver in the balance beam finals. her teammate simone biles added a bronze medal to her collection of golds, after a rare stumble on the beam.ds meanwhile, on the track: emma o coburn became the first american woman to ever medal in the 3,000 meter steeplechase, taking the bronze. still to come on the newshour: new revelations tying donald trump's campaign chair to ukraine's pro-russian party, on

politics monday: hillary clinton's edge in key swing states, doctors desperately trying to save lives amid syriai air strikes, and much more. >> woodruff: and how political unrest in ukraine has made itsuk way into the race for president of the united states. before becoming donald trump's campaign manager, paul manafort consulted for victor yanukovitch, the former ukrainian president who fled to russia in 2014.ia and later faced charges in the deaths of civilian protestors. yanukovitch's removal exposed a political system in kiev rife with corruption. today, "the new york times" reports of a "black ledger" that allegedly links manafort to millions of dollars in secret cash payments. john yang has the story.

>> reporter: the papers were discovered by ukraine's newlyuk formed national anti-corruption bureau. in some 400 pages of handwritten notes, paul manafort's nameau appears 22 times over the courso of five years, totaling $12.7 t million. "the new york times" moscow correspondent andrew kramer, is one of the reporters who wrote the story, and he joins us nownd from moscow. andrew, thanks for being with us. andrew, first of all, tell us exactly what it was that they found. what were these ledgers, whereed was the money coming from, what were the payments for? >> those are all very good questions, thank you. the ledger is called in ukraine the black ledger, a collection of papers, perhaps 400 pages, as you mentioned, with handwritten notes describing payments from the party of regions which is a pro-russian political party that paul manafort worked for before becoming manager of the

republican campaign this year in the united states.te the outlays described in this ledger included legitimate campaign expenses such as advertising, travel for candidates, and also illegal activities under any definition such as payments to the electoral commission of ukraine, members of the electoral commission receiving moneys from this same fund.u according to ledger, there is also mention of paul manafort. at the same time you have aav payment for a campaign consultant, there are outlays to potential illegal activitiesc like bribing. where the money came from, also a very good question. i spoke with a senior member tob have the party of regions who described using the systemys before he left the party, and he said that the money was, in part, undocumented campaign contributions to the party of regions and also money extorted from business owners in ukraine by the party. >> yang: why is this

significant? why is the fact that manafort's name is on this ledger at the sum of $12.7 million, why is this significant? >> well, i think it's significant because the trump campaign has made russia an issue this year. mr. trump has spoken favorably of president vladimir putin. v there was a hack of the democratic national committee email system blamed on the services of russia. this is why with we went time to look into mr. manafort'ss business dealings and political activities in ukraine over the past decade. >> yang: and remind us of victor yanukovitch, the former president of ukraine, who waso one of manafort's clients ass well as the party. remind us of who he is, what he did and his relationship withhi vladimir putin. >> certainly.

mr. yanukovich was prime minister and president of ukraine with a pro-russian line to his politics, though he did also negotiate with the european union to join a trade agreement eventually instead of choosing that agreement, choosing the alternative trade agreement with russia, which was the cause of a large popular uprising in ukraine in 2014 that led to his ouster. mr.ianmr.ian yanukovich fled toy he's living. >> yang: mr. manafort said the suggestion i accepted cash payment is nonsense qul and said his political payments go for staff, polling, research and advertising, all inclusive.ad how does that jibe, what he said in his statement, with what the anti-corruption unit found? >> the anti-corruption unitni found his name mentioned in this ledger according to a statementa from the anti-corruption bureaut

they could not prove he actually received the honey because they don't know the significants beside these line items in the ledger. it's conceivable somebody else may have taken this money and deposited it into a company thaa sent the money to mr. manafort. this is clearly an under-the-table payment, in any case and, from what i understand of his statement, he doesn't dispute the sum involved or that he was paid for his work in ukraine but rather the nature of the payment, that it was an understand the table payment. >> yang: and the story talked about business dealings paul manafort had in ukraine and their connections with people connected to yanukovich. >> that's right. sometimes it's said you can do good while doing well and, while he was doing what was said to be a good deed of promoting democracy in ukraine, he was also doing well.al there are several opportunities open for lucrative side deals

during his period in ukraine. we examined one in particular involving the purchase of a cable television station inat southern ukraine, in odessa,de that was orchestrated through a series of offshore shell companies. these same companies were used by members of the inner circle of the yanukovitch government to monitor money obtained through corrupt means in ukraine. tinld case was mr. manafort was or intended to do business with this corrupt group of people who led that country for about a decade. >> yang:.>> >andrew kramer of theniernlingsg us to talk about your reporting. >> thanks. >> woodruff: and now for much more on the twists and turns ofh this presidential race, we turn to politics monday: with tamarad keith of npr and susan page of "u.s.a. today." welcome to you both.we we have been listening to this

report. this?gnificant is >> it's unclear that this iss going to dramatically change anything for the trump came pain. in some ways, the idea of some connection to russia or something has long existed especially around paul manafort, who has a relatively long career of working for not just yanukovitch but other you wouldr say unsavory characters or people who have falon out of political favor bush fallen out of political favor with the government over the decades. >> woodruff: we heard strong language over the times, reporters speaking about corruption, venal, it's not a pretty picture.ty >> every day you spend talking about anything except hillary clinton's record or what your own vision of the country is a day that's lost. in addition i think this opens the doors to queries of donald trump's own financial

arrangements in russia. we may learn more about that in the next couple of months. >> woodruff: the "wall street journal" editorial page is writing about donald trump, a consistently conservative newspaper, using very strong language in support of conservative causes. they laid it on the line and said, donald trump, get your act together by labor day or turn it over to mike pence. >> there is a lot of frustration i heard a lot talking to republicans. i talked to a republican pollster today who worked ford marco rubio, he told me that expecting donald trump to change is like marrying someone and hoping they'll change later and, generally, he said that doesn't work out very well. i talked to another republican today who said, well, that teleprompter speech he gave about foreign policy that was solid. >> woodruff: that he gave today in ohio.

>> exactly, he's done several of the teleprompter speeches andd the republican said let's see if you can stay on message a day, two days, seven days, two weeks, and this position was calling for cutting him loose, to move millions of dollars to focus on races and not spend it on the presidential race.ra >> woodruff: is this a particularly weight? >> it's more fracturing of the republican coalition.ic it's the immediate editorial side that's been the strongest voice for republicanism and conservatism especially in the united states and you see theco foreign policy establishment associated with republican presidents breaking away.ak you see senator after senator, half a dozen republican sitting senators saying they may not vote for donald trump.um this is a party that is imploding, and it's a sign of a civil war that we're going to see when this election is over. >> woodruff: tamara one of the things the journal editorial

said isto they basically called the trump campaign incompetent. thousand do the experts see the campaign compared to hillary clinton's effort? >> experts i've spoken to basically say this is campaign malpractice, it's not a fully functioning campaign like you would expect ag campaign to function like a ca campaign that would win would function. donald trump doesn't want that. it's not like he necessarily can't put it together, he doesn't wante to put it togethet over the weekend, he tweeted repeatedly he's not changing,ha there is no pivot. people just want him to change,, but he's not changing. so in some ways it's kind of like you have to listen to him. he doesn't want to run ads. he thinks he can do free media. he's running this the way he wants it.nt >> woodruff: and, susan, the trump campaign, you asked them and they said, yes, we have a plan, we have a strategy. >> so they don't have an

historic vision of a campaign but since we started with polling in 1952, the candidate ahead at this point two weeks after the conventions are over has invariably won the popular vote. so you're getting to a point where the election starts to get, quote, it's not quite baked yet, but isreich concreter getting set and harder and harder and takes more and more power to change what's been laid as you go forward.or this is really, even though t we're still in the summer, we're still in august, this is a pretty critical period if you look at elections historically.n >> woodruff: the polls are showing, not just in the battleground states where hillary clinton is ahead, but in states that mitt romney and john mccain won where donald trump is having difficulty now. >> the demographics have changed a little bit since mitt romney and john mccain ran. in a state like georgia, where it's looking a little more

competitive, i think to say that hillary clinton can compete in georgia seems like a bridge farther than a lot of people are willing to go, but north carolina, for instance, i a state certainly where the clinton campaign believes theyv have a chance to win this and if they can that would be a huge problem for donald trump. >> woodruff: susan, quickly, your newspaper had a poll today looking at young voters under 35rbgs millennials. >> and the historic weakness by donald trump among the younger voters. he's only getting 20% of the millennial vote.ll they are the least reliable, but we have never seen a capt. in that modern times have that poor a showing of millennials. if that trend continues, it will be the third consecutive election where democrats have beat the republicans by double dujts among younger voters. that starts to set partisan preference in a way that's really dangerous for the g.o.p.

>> woodruff: hillary clinton went out on the trail with vice president, working classng scranton b, pennsylvania, on a day donald trump is hammeringha national security and i.s.i.s.,l is she as vulnerable as donald trump makes her out to be? at one point he says she's not capable of handling i.s.i.s. >> he also implied she might not be healthy enough to handle i.s.i.s. there was a little of that in there. this is an area where sometimes she doesn't talk about it with the urgency he talks about it, and that might give him a little bit of space. but many polls are now showing that people believe hillary clinton does have the temperament on foreign policy ie a way that some voters have concerns about donald trump. >> woodruff: but he comes back to that language, susan, time and again, suggesting she wouldn't be strong enough to stand up to something like i.s.i.s. >> if you want to look at the biggest problem hillary clinton has, this is an electorate thath wants change in terms of the

battle of terrorism, in terms of the growing equality in the u.s. system, so there is an argument to be made against hillary clinton who is, as donald trumpu would say, a third term of barack obama. the question is, is donald trump the person who can prosecute the case against hillary clinton. >> woodruff: and tam remarks what do we think about that? because if he does -- say he gives a speech about ias.i.s. every other day between now and the election. can that -- is that the kind of thing that can move voters? >> well, i mean, he would have the do just those. he would have to do just the teleprompter and not the big raucous rallies. they fuel him and give him a ton of energy, but at those raucous rallies, a more nuanced argument about whether the iraq pulloutpu should have happened at the pace that it did becomes barack obama founded i.s.i.s. and then becomes, you know, a day of doubling down and then a day of tweeting about sarcasm.

>> woodruff: and he'll keep coming back to the 30,000 e-mails. he brings it up every chance he gets. >gets. and that is a vulnerabilityn for hillary clinton.i but her attack on him is he doesn't have the disposition or temperament to handle the job of president and that has an argument that has gottens traction with american voters. >> woodruff: susan page, tamera keith, thank you very much. 85 days to go. >> woodruff: stay with us.wi coming up on the newshour: are we safer now than we were on 9- 11? and photography that makes us rethink privacy in a world full of cameras. but first, the years-long fight to control syria's largest city- - aleppo-- grinds on, with civilians stuck between rebel

and government forces. last week, more than two dozen syrian physicians there wrote a letter to president obama urgin him to take action to end the carnage. only 35 physicians remain to serve more than 300,000 people. they wrote, in part, because they themselves are under attack-- the people whose mission it is to help the civilians caught in the crossfire. and they are hit in the places that should be safest: hospitals and other medical facilities. special correspondent marcia biggs reports now, from southern turkey near the syrian border. and a warning: this story contains images that may upset some viewers. >> reporter: it is a war crime to target medical facilities, but in syria, bombs rain down on hospitals, doctors and patients. just in the last few weeks, pro- government forces bombed a maternity hospital in idlib, supported by save the children. and airstrikes hit six hospitali

around aleppo. nurses gathered babies from their incubators, the strike narrowly missing their ward. rami kalazi is no stranger to airstrikes like these. >> i was sleeping here, my colleague was here, and the attack happened. we came out alive, i don't know how. >> reporter: kalazi was one of aleppo's last remaining doctors. we caught up with him in turkeyc he said he believes these hospitals were targeted. >> they are the artery of life in the city. can you imagine a life in city without hospitals? who will treat your kids, who will make the surgeries for the injured people? so they are targeting these hospitals because they know ifal these hospitals were completely destroyed, life will be completely destroyed. >> reporter: eastern aleppo hada already suffered a massive blow in april when al qud's hospital, supported by doctors without borders, and the city's main pediatric hospital, was

destroyed by two consecutivede airstrikes. >> it was a very hard night, every one or two hours we had an airstrike and we had to treat some injured people. >> reporter: soon he realized the full extent of the damage, more than 50 people dead, including eight members ofin hospital staff. >> they were all friends, it was emotionally so hard. because you are treating your friend, you know how hard isha that. you see that he is in danger, ho may not survive.e. it was horrible night. >> reporter: one of them, 35- year-old waseem maaz, seen here on that fateful night, was a beloved pediatrician, one of only two in the entire city. he was just beginning his shift. moments later, disaster. what has syria lost there? >> can you imagine when you have 300,000 people in your city, and you have only two pediatricianso

and you have lost one? can you imagine the loss is big. >> reporter: according to physicians for human rights, there have been over 375 strikes on medical facilities and doctors in syria since the revolution began. their report stipulates that over 90% of those came at the hands of the syrian regime andhe its allies. >> syria had a very sophisticated health infrastructure. hospitals that are multi- storied, very well equipped, very large, very well marked. you don't make a mistake of hitting that hospital, and you certainly don't do it multiplece times. this is absolutely a deliberate strategy by the syrian government. >> reporter: widney brown is director of programs for thect physicians for human rights, which maintains that the destruction of hospitals by president assad the assad regime is being used as a weapon of war. >> when you target a hospital, you don't just destroy the brick and mortar structure. you destroy a safe place whereuc people can go for life saving aid.

when you kill a doctor, you don't just kill that one individual, you also kill all the people he or she would have saved. >> reporter: brown says medical professionals are specifically targeted for detention, torturef and murder by the syrian regime. 750 have been killed in the lasb five years, like 46-year-old cardiologist hassan al araj, whose car was hit by an airstrike. >> we believe they are being persecuted because they can give eyewitness testimony about all of the crimes committed by the syrian government when they say a chemical weapon is used, they are incredibly credible. >> reporter: hospitals are often hit multiple times as part of what is called a double tap strategy. planes will circle back after hitting a target, once first responders have arrived on scene, as shown in this video,de to target those delivering aid to the wounded. despite the risks, hospitals still continue to run. here dr. kalazi sweeps up after one of the more than 20 strikest

his hospital suffered, creatinge a new normal for an already ravaged community. >> all the hospitals, in aleppo city have been bombed, all of them, there's no exceptions. the first thing you will think in is looking for your colleagues, are they alive orea dead. will i see, for example, an arm for my colleague or a leg, or i will see a body, or half of a body. or will i see him alive, i don't know. we announce among the patients that it's now risky to stay in the hospital, so please find safe places or go as fast as you can to your homes.or >> reporter: what about the critical patients? >> they stay in the hospital, and some of them died during in these attacks. >> reporter: so there's justst really nowhere to go?re >> no. >> reporter: you would think that the hospital would be a safe zone. >> but in syria there is nothing safe.

>> reporter: kalazi told us the memory that haunts him the most is of a family of seven, pulledy from under the rubble. >> only one survived. only one child, he was three years old. i was completely freezed, i just cried. when i see a child dead, it's so hard, so harder than an adult because he's a child, he's innocent, he's made nothing to be punished for. >> reporter: amidst so much despair, dr. kalazi's wife gave birth to a baby boy here in turkey just over a year ago. >> we decided to have a baby, because it's like a new hope, you know. but we decided to stay in aleppo, because we have a mission to complete. we are physicians. we are humans, and this is our city. >> reporter: a few months ago his hospital and his home were hit on the same day. here he is in this video with his wife and infant son, surveying the damage.

kalazi was on r&r outside the city last month, when government forces blocked the last road to aleppo, making it not onlyt impossible for him to return, but for the people to getr desperately needed food and medical aid. >> what we have in syria are two stories: it's quick deaths by being bombed when you're a civilian, and it's the slowd death of starvation.at they are facing this as the they are facing this as the u.n. security council does nothing. >> reporter: do you ever feel abandoned? >> from the world, yes. from the international community, yes. because they can do. and they don't want to.to no one wants to help us from the governments, we don't know why.w >> reporter: but halfway aroundb the world, these american doctors do want to help. >> so you have doctors who sende for example x-rays.

>> reporter: doctors zaher sahloul and samer attar represent the syrian american medical society, which connects doctors in the u.s. with kalazi's hospital and others all over syria. >> they can move the camera frot one patient to patient, describe the patient to me, put theti camera on the monitor so i can see the vital signs, i can communicate with the doctor also and they will tell me what's happening. so that way you are there, but through this very simple technology. >> you are not alone in treating your patients and you have thisn emotional support. >> reporter: sahloul and attar traveled last month to aleppo tl show solidarity with theirhe syrian colleagues. >> you definitely feel targetede everyone feels targeted. you're in an o.r. and a missile lands somewhere in the vicinity of the hospital, you feel the foundations shake. there was one moment i was knocked off my feet, your ears

ringing, people will get back up and go back to work. they're staying out of a sensego of obligation and duty to help the helpless they are heroically and selflessly risking their lives. >> reporter: they say some hospitals have even moved their emergency rooms underground to protect the patients, who come in droves. >> there were just so many people. it was just child after child after child after child. you say to yourself please god, when will this trail of injured end. >> reporter: are you angry by the lack of response? >> of course you're angry, five years on, half a million killed and 12 million displaced. those numbers are rising. now we have a city of 300,000 people being sieged, andei starved, and bombed to death with the international community sitting idly by, and you have children who are burning tires to create their own no fly zonee that's embarrassing, that's shameful. >> reporter: the doctors testified last week at a u.n. special session on aleppo, where they conveyed messages from their syrian colleagues treating babies exposed to chlorine gas and toddlers with spines shredded decimated by shrapnel.

wrapping tiny bodies in white shrouds. after five long years, one 21- year-old nurse knows now not to ask for too much. >> i expected her to talk about no fly zone, peace, or all ofce these things, and she said. i have a patient, her name is shahed, she is ten years old, and she had also spinal cord injury and probably brain injury. the patient so that her life can be saved, because her mom comes every day and she sits on the head of the bed and she talks to the daughter, who is on life support, her daughter shahed, and she tells her, "i would like to take you home so you can ride your bicycle." this is what she wanted from the security council. >> reporter: while the siege on aleppo was partially broken byti rebel soldiers last weekend, the last road in and out of the city is still far too dangerous to travel. so rami kalazi, remains on the outside looking in, desperate to get back to his beloved hometown. >> in any time aleppo is not besieged i will go back to aleppo, even for a visit. it's my lovely place. >> reporter: it's still yourte

lovely place. >> yes, it's my lovely place because i feel i'm born to be b here to help these people. >> reporter: a place, where no one is safe, and saving lives can get you killed. for the pbs newshour, i'm marcia biggs, in gazientep, southern turkey. >> woodruff: and now a look at the current state of securityy inside the u.s. as we approach the 15th anniversary of 9/11, journalist steven brill spent the past year looking into how the country has changed since that terrible day, what's been spent, and what gaps still exist. his article "are we any safer?" appears in the latest issue of "the atlantic," and i recently" sat down with him and asked what he learned.

>> in a nutshell, what i concluded was the way we've responded to the terrorist attacks, to 9/11 which, you know, changed everything, is sort of a microcosm of what we are as a country today. a lot of it was heroic, ingenious, people going beyond the cause of duty, doing great things, and lot of it was the opposite. a lot of beltway boondoggles, billions of dollars wasted because government contractors promised technologies ands solutions that they couldn't produce, and we've struggled as a country with dealing with the notion of this new kind of risk. the idea, as president bush explained, after 9/11, of never again, we're never going to have a terrorist attack again, that's just unrealistic in today's world. >> you clearly give the

government and two administrations credit for getting some things right. >> a lot of things right and a lot of unsung people, tens of thousands of people going to work every day at the department of homeland security, the f.b.i., places like t.s.a., the border patrol, really obsessed with the job of keeping us safe, and the only time we notice them is when something goes wrong, and that makes it a tough job. on the other hand, a lot of it went back to politics as usual. every small town that you can think of made a request for government grants, for homeland security, for everything ranging from routine fire trucks to fish tanks in a police station. so there are a lot of abuses. >> i was struck because, early on in the piece, you say, yes, we are safer than we were on 9/11, safer against the kind of threat we faced on 9/11. >> right. >> woodruff: but the threat

has changed, and that's what the government -- all of us -- are grappling with right now. >> we've done a lot to battenat down the hatches to make us safer, at the airports, at the ports, all over the place. but the threats have multiplied. the threats around the world. our defenses are much stronger. the offense has multiplied and is much stronger and it's more difficult because, unlike theth kind of coordinated, orchestrated attack that we faced on 9/11 where people were communicating, money wasas exchanging hands, that kind of stuff which we can now track, just some lone wolf in his basement is online and he can go into a gun store in this country and buy an assault weapon, and he shoots up a shopping mall and yells out, you know, something in arabic, that makes him a terrorist, and it scares us mightily, and that's not something we can really prevent

other than doing something about assault weapons. >> woodruff: that's what interested me so much in this piece was you look at one thing after another the government did, some of it successfully, but still you have this undefined threat out there, some of which, as you say, it's a lone wolf, it's somebody who may be mentally unstable who decides to adopt a terror -- >> exactly, and there are more unorchestrated threats that wert in the headlines right after 9/11 that basically fell out of the headlinesof and off our radr and, frankly, that the government hasn't paid enoughen attention to. the best example is the bioterror attack. right after 9/11 with the anthrax attacks, that's all we thought of. the technology that we tried to develop 15 years ago still hasn't been developed that woulu warn us in the right way of a

bio attack. we've not done enough to protect ourselves from dirty bombs, you can go to hospitals and other sites all over the country and maybe have to break a tiny padlock if that to get ahold of radiological material to mix with an explosive and create a dirty bomb. >> woodruff: why hasn't something like that been addressed? >> because we tend to go after yesterday's headline, our attention shifts, and we don't -- when you say that everything's a priority, if you have ten or 12 high priorities, none becomes a priority except if it's in the news, the headlines, if it's part of a congressional hearing, maybe. so we haven't done the job we need to do of really assessing all the threats rationally and having a discussion with the american people that says we can't deal with everything, we

have to have priorities, and some things are going to slipp through the cracks and, by the way, we are going to p be -- there are going to be terrorist attacks, not of the kind we had on 9/11. people are never going to be able to hijack a plane because of the t.s.a., because we have fortified cockpit doors in airlines, we've done a lot tot deal with that, but we haven't done much to deal with trains or ferry boats, for example. >> woodruff: but because of our political system, it's hard for our political leaders to say candidly to the american peopleo that there will always be a threat out there, that you cannot completely -- >> president obama has tried toa do that and, every time he's even in a subtle way tried to do that, where he said and indeed his department of homeland security has implemented really important medication measures, really important, you know, recovery measures if there's an

attack. there was a drill in boston just a few months before the bombing there and, when they did a report about that drill and how that had really helped to save lives after the marathon bombing, he was attacked byy senator coburn for putting too much emphasis on mitigation and not enough on prevention. that to me is the equivalent of saying why do you have ambulances on call and why don't you do something about crime and traffic safety? well, you try to prevent crime and car accidents but you have emergency rooms and ambulances. you acknowledge you're not going to prevent all traffic accidents. we are not going to prevent all terrorism, especially if you define it as someone being able to get an assault weapon whichch you can do in this country and claim to be boil to i.s.i.s. or some organization like that. >> woodruff: what would you you say toli the next leader of this country, the next president

about what most needs to be done to make this country safe? >> well, the first thing that needs not to be done is declare war on muslims or islam because that's exactly what those terrorists want. they want this tote be the apocalyptic end of all worlds war between them and us, and president bush didn't take the bait, and president obama has resisted taking that bait. donald trump campaigns on that. he almost makes you think -- in fact, it makes me think -- that i.s.i.s. would love to have someone like trump be president because they get the fil -- fulfillment of their dream, the great confrontation with western civilization. the second thing is to keep educating the country while doing everything you can to prevent terrorism, keep, educating the country to the reality that there are going to be some attacks and it doesn't mean it's the apocalypse, it

doesn't mean you're weak. saying there are going to be attacks doesn't mean you're throwing in the towel, but it means we have to be realistic. >> well, it's certainly a provocative piece.at it's one that reminds us of how complex the challenges are, and they don't get any simpler as time goes by.y steven brill, "are we any safer?." thank you very much. >> you're welcome. >> woodruff: a photography museum is re-opening in a sleekl new home in new york city, with an exhibition to make you think twice about all the cameras tha surround us. jeffrey brown has the story. >> brown: a stark message stops visitors in their tracks at the threshold of the internationalre center of photography's new

home: "by entering this area, you consent to beingei photographed, filmed and/or/o otherwise recorded, and surrender the right to the use of such material throughout the universe in perpetuity." and that's what the museum's first exhibition in its brand new space in lower manhattan explores: the changing role of privacy in a world inundated with surveillance and oversharing. >> what is your secret life? how can you keep it secret? i think that's one of the keys of this exhibition is really that: keeping your privacy, but also making sure that your secret life remains your secret life. >> brown: pauline vermare is the associate curator of "public, private, secret", a mix of visual media, modern and m historical. there's this 1946 yale joel j photo of a couple through a two- way mirror for a series in "life" magazine. and more contemporary surveillance art by jill magid,b who captured herself on surveillance cameras, and merrym alpern, who secretly shot through the bathroom window of a seedy sex club, for her "dirty

windows" series. the museum itself has come aco long way from its 1974 beginnings in a manhattan mansion under the direction of famed hungarian photographer cornell capa. since then, the world of photography has changed. >> it is the most democratic format. it is in the hands of all of us, we all are now visually communicating. >> brown: mark lubell is the current director of the museum known as the i.c.p. he's overseen an institutional shift, from photojournalism and art photography to an embrace or today's digital media landscape, where cell phone cameras are ubiquitous. >> the big difference is, it used to be a few people taking images that went out tot millions. and now it's millions and millions of people going out to millions and millions of people. i think it's a seismic shift in the medium, and it's something that we should be looking at anu exploring. >> brown: in the inaugural exhibition, that means a

sometimes jarring juxtaposition of images. >> we start with historical precedents, and everything is shown together, it's not like there's a hierarchy, everything is at the same level. >> brown: a line-up of mid-20th century mugshots taken by unknown photographers sits just beneath portraits of four muslim women, prisoners in a p concentration camp during the algerian war. they were forced to pose withoud their veils. in our own time, people expose themselves...es >> i am so gay. >> i'm not gay. >> brown: ...offering up privatf thoughts online, in the form of video diaries available to anyone. artist natalie bookchin sifted through hundreds of those and created an installation titledd "testament." >> i'm choreographing these moments and organizing them to try to make some sense out of them. i think that there's a sense, first of all that this stuff isa junk, right, that it's throw

away, that we shouldn't watch it, that it's all just narcissistic, and that it's kids doing silly things with their phones. and what i'm trying to show in this work is it's not just kids, it's people. you know, people are doing this, old people, young people, men, women. >> brown: we see and hear some subjects alone, others in a kind of chorus focused on a particular theme-- one of her pieces examined people who had lost their jobs in the recession. >> i wanted in the work to both show the way that people were alone, in some way trying toal engage in a political discussion or a social discussion. i something that just happened that's really bad because the economy is crashing and people are losing their jobs, but then at the same time people are isolated, and alone, and they'rn speaking to themselves. >> brown: the culture of celebrity is also on display, in many different forms: patrick mcmullan's "facebook" collage

from this year's new york fashion week. a series of andy warhol polaroids-- framed on mirrors, so you're a part of the subjects' 15 minutes of famees too. and then there's the placement of this untitled self-portrait by famed art photographer cindyy sherman. this is art, she's shown in every museum in the world. and then you have kim kardashian's selfies. a book about selfies. you're saying they belong together in our world? >> well specifically this image in fact by cindy sherman, because she's pretending to be a star, you know, hunted by theu paparazzi. this is what we're talking about, that tension and the resistance, and this show is generally about the resistance or the opposite of resistance, which is what kim kardashian does. >> brown: which is "take my picture." >> just take it and here it isan for you. >> brown: the museum also wants us to question the very definition of photography-- andi who's a photographer. >> what i do on my phone is not photography.

i am creating images. >> brown: we're not taking photos on our phones? what are we doing? >> well we're communicating, we're communicating, but we're communicating using the image. that thematic of sort of understanding the world today, and looking at it, and examining, and debating it is central to i.c.p.'s d.n.a. and that's why the show makes a lot of sense. >> brown: the exhibition "public, private, secret" is on view through early january 2017. from new york, i'm jeffrey brown for the pbs newshour. >> woodruff: on the newshour online right now: a columnist on our making sense page takes a look at so-called "donor-advised funds," which he says give allwh the tax benefits of charitable giving, without any obligation that the money is actually usedc for charity. you can read more on our

website: pbs.org/newshour. and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm judy woodruff. join us online and again hereer tomorrow evening. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you and goodan night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: lincoln financial is committed to helping you take charge of your future. >> and by the alfred p. sloan foundation. supporting science, technology,. and improved economicmi performance and financialfi literacy in the 21st century. >> supported by the john d. and

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