captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for sunday, may 28: president trump returns to washington to questions about his agenda at home and abroad. john f. kennedy's legacy, 100 years after his birth. also, the enduring appeal of" sergeant pepper," one of rock and roll's greatest albums. next on "pbs newshour weekend." >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. judy and josh weston. the cheryl and philip milstein family. the john and helen glessner family trust-- supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america--

designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. from the tisch wnet studios at lincoln center in new york, hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: hello and thanks for joining us. this memorial day holiday weekend, about 40-million americans are traveling at least 50 miles or more, according to the aaa. most by car, and three-million by plane. now, new restrictions on plane travel are in the works. homeland security secretary john kelly said today the trump administration is considering a ban on large electronic devices, including tablets and laptops, on all international flights to and from the u.s. a partial ban now affects 50 flights a day from ten cities. mostly in the middle east. kelly also said he's likely to

order greater screening of carry-on bags, often overstuffed by travelers avoiding airline fees for checked luggage. >> we're very definitely going to raise the bar in terms of baggage security. the t.s.a. people who are looking at those bags as they go through the scanner can't see exactly what's in the bags, so now, because they're stuffed so full, now in terms of the t.s.a. process, they will ask people to open their bags so they can look inside. >> sreenivasan: following last week's terrorist attack in manchester, england, kelly said europe faces a more imminent threat from isis operatives than the u.s. >> we have threats all the time, no, right now, specific threat, but that goes to the fact that we are over here and not over there. the fact is, that as the caliphate is being destroyed that is syria and iraq, there are large numbers of returning fighters, western europe, in

many cases like the guy that did this thing in manchester. >> sreenivasan: kelly played down reports of president trump's adviser and son-in-law, jared kushner, having explored a secret back-channel with russia. kelly said any channel of communications, "is a good thing." congressional democrats today called for kushner's contacts and security clearance to be fully investigated. british police arrested a 12th person today in their investigation of last week's terrorist attack on people leaving an ariana grande concert in manchester, england. british authorities have now released these images of the attacker, a british-born-and- raised son of libyan immigrants, on his way to the concert site with a backpack bomb. police say he returned to britain from libya ten days ago and likely assembled his bomb in a rented apartment in manchester. the explosion he set off killed himself and 22 people, including seven children, and injured more than 100 people. british airways resumed flights

today from london's two busiest airports, heathrow and gatwick. passengers braved long lines to check in for their re-booked flights after the airline was forced to cancel hundreds of flights yesterday due to a global computer system failure. many passengers had spent the night sleeping in the airports. the airline blamed a power supply problem for the disruption, and c.e.o. alex cruz apologized to stranded travelers. in the philippines, authorities say at least 85 people have died in fighting this week between government troops and islamic militants. the fighting began six days ago in marawi, a mostly muslim city of 200-thousand people in the southern part of the country, where muslim separatists have been active for decades. thousands of civilians have fled the city, many telling aid workers at evacuation centers their homes were destroyed. mississippi governor phil bryant calls last night's mass shooting that left eight people dead a "senseless tragedy." it happened 70 miles south of mississippi's capital, jackson, as a 35-year-old man shot his victims in three different houses. a sheriff's deputy who responded

to a 911 call was among those killed. police say the rampage may have sparked by a dispute between the shooter and his wife and in- laws. the alleged shooter told the local newspaper, "the clarion ledger," quote "suicide by cop was my intention." the two good samaritans stabbed to death on a train in oregon on friday have been identified as 53-year-old army veteran ricky best and 23-year-old reed college graduate taliesin myrrdin namaki meche. the men had intervened to protect two women on the receiving end of anti-muslim rant on a portland commuter train. the assailant who allegedly stabbed them and is now charged with murder is 35-year-old jeremy christian, a known white supremacist with a criminal record. the f.b.i. is now working with portland police to investigate the killings as a hate crime. the war in afghanistan is now the longest in american history. it's been almost 17 years since the united states invaded in retaliation for the september 11 terrorist attacks carried out by al qaeda, the terrorist group

harbored at the time by the taliban-led government. to date, 2,396 american military personnel, along with 1,136 coalition soldiers have died in the war. so have an estimated 170- thousand fighters and civilians in afghanistan and pakistan. now, with the taliban having regained control of 40% of the country, the trump administration is contemplating a surge of 5,000 u.s. troops to add to the over 8,000 still there. joining me here to discuss this is barnett rubin, associate director of new york university's center on international cooperation. he previously worked in the obama state department. why 17 years out are we talking about our adversary controlling 40% of our country? >> we never defined what we had accomplished. we had a long list of goals which were exirg and killing

terrorists. and we were never compactly clear where the boundary around that category was and trying to stabilize afghanistan, those two missions got in their way. we were distracted by iraq. we never really had an adequate understanding of what the problem was, and we did not pay attention to the region around afghanistan which has changed very radically in the 16 years ago osh so that we have been there. >> sreenivasan: it seems like there are two goals now that are countering each other. you can either stabilize the country or road out the terrorists. >> you can have a permanent u.s. military presence there to try to strike at terrorists and other enemies and so on in the region or you can try and stabilize the country. because the country cannot be stabilized with a permanent presence of u.s. troops because most of the countries of the region don't want us there and they let us know that by supporting the taliban.

>> sreenivasan: what did the obama administration get wrong? >> of course i was there. in my opinion, the big mistakes were, one, when obama announced a troop surge, he should not have given a sedate for withdrawing it -- a date for wrawng it. and two, when he announced the troop surge that is the time he should have made very far-reaching offers of negotiated settlement. unfortunately our military and many others in the government believe you shouldn't make any offers of negotiated settlement until you have already succeeded militarily. but that is too late. you have to do it when your comaftcapacities are increasing. i believe they are about to make the same mistake now. they're about to add administer troops and then they say when they are stronger they will make some offer of negotiation. >> sreenivasan: wouldn't the

5,000 troops make a difference? >> of course the 5,000 troops will make some difference but they will make only a marginal difference. they might stop the erosion of the stalemate as it is now as if you say, these estimates are all very dubious but let's say the taliban control approximately 40% of the population. well, maybe with 5,000 troops we could get that down to 30% or 25%. that would not be decisive in any way. and then of course our troops are not going to be there forever. no matter how many times we tell people that we're committed everyone knows we are not going to be in afghanistan longer than the afghans so they can wait us out. so there is no alternative to working towards a political settlement not just with the taliban but with the countries of the region now, immediately. >> sreenivasan: we have been talking about policy, what about the people living through this? kind of seesaw between a local

or provincial government control and then back and fort to taliban control? >> from the point of view of the people in afghanistan this war has been going on for almost 40 years since there was a coup detat in 1948. you give the number of people killed and injured in the last 16 years, people believe a million or more people have been killed over the last 40 years including the period of the soviet intervention. it's been a terrible agony that the people of afghanistan have gone through for a long time. of course they have become very resilient and those of them who aren't killed, find ways of adapting but it's becoming more and more difficult for them. >> sreenivasan: barnett rubin, thank you for joining us. >> sreenivasan: tomorrow marks the 100th birthday of john

fitzgerald kennedy, the nation's 35th president, whose tenure was tragically cut short by an assassin in 1963. despite only three years in office, j.f.k. continually ranks among the top ten u.s. presidents in polls of historians. as "newshour weekend" special correspondent jeff greenfield reports, kennedy's death has given historians almost as much to study as his life. >> reporter: kennedy's death has >> and so my fellow americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. >> reporter: for many of us, it is as stark a measure of the passage of time as any. could this symbol of a new generation really have been born a hundred years ago? could he really be dead for 54 years, eight years longer than he lived? from a-half-century's distance, we have a clearer understanding of why his presence was so arresting: the handsome war hero with a radiant wife and young

children who helped define him. the oldest president replaced by the youngest ever elected, whose flair and wit became defining traits. but now, we also know that the image of that idealized family concealed a private life far different. historians debate his sometimes- contradictory legacy. he ran for president as a cold warrior and ramped up u.s. military presence in vietnam. but in the last year of his life, he called for an end to the cold war. >> we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combat ignorance, poverty, and disease. >> reporter: and he signed a nuclear test ban treaty with moscow. he presided over attempts to bring down the cuban government of fidel castro. but during the cuban missile crisis, when the soviets placed missiles 100 miles from florida's shore, he rejected the

military option to remove them and may have averted ww-iii. he was at first a reluctant civil rights warrior, but in the last year of his life he committed to a landmark bill that banned racial discrimination in public places and the workplace, though this would have jeopardized his re- election. >> we chose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. >> reporter: and he set the nation on a path to win the space race. despite what he did in life, the shocking manner of his death and its aftermath may have had as great an impact. his alleged assassin was a violence-prone former marine and self-taught marxist. but for many, the responsibility was elsewhere. this was supreme court chief justice earl warren at the capitol memorial service. >> we do know that such acts are

commonly stimulated by forces of hatred and malevolence, such as today are eating their way into the bloodstream of american life. >> reporter: there was something of a consensus that something had gone wrong, terribly wrong in the collective soul of the country, where optimism and confidence had always been at the core of our outlook. moreover, it seemed impossible to believe that the most powerful person on earth could be brought down by a single, insignificant figure. instead, conspiracy theories bloomed in best-selling books and popular movies, pointing to a cabal of shadowy, powerful figures in the military- industrial complex. and to the extent that americans embraced such theories, what did it say about how much trust should be placed in the legitimacy of the american system? that kind of doubt grew deeper and wider in the late-1960s-with the divisive and costly vietnam war, racial unrest in the

cities, generational upheaval on campus and the assassinations of jfk's brother, robert, and martin luther king jr. a decade after kennedy's death, after vietnam and watergate, the percentage of americans who had trusted their government in washington to do what was right dropped by more than half. no one can say what would have been different if president kennedy's life had not been cut short. his ingrained cautiousness might have made him less ambitious about launching a war on poverty than his successor, lyndon johnson. but that same cautiousness-- and his skepticism about the military's judgment, after the bay of pigs and the cuban missile crisis, as well as his long-held doubts about fighting a land war in asia -- might have made him pull back from the vietnam commitment he'd made in his first years. perhaps his extramarital affairs would have become public and threatened his political survival. what does seem clear is that his death drained something out of the american spirit; made us less confident, less certain. if that could happen in broad

daylight in the streets of a city, maybe we weren't the country we thought we were. >> sreenivasan: 50 years ago this week, the beatles release"" sergeant pepper's lonely hearts club band." from its cover to its 13 track"" sergeant pepper" redefined the album as an art form and rock stars as artists. to commemorate the anniversary, universal music group has released a deluxe boxed set including a stereo remix, outtakes and alternative tracks, and a documentary about how the album was made. newshour weekend special correspondent alison stewart spoke with music writer anthony decurtis about "sergeant pepper's" impact and influence. >> sergeant pepper's changed 00 lot about the way musicians were treated how they were seen and also, how albums were made. fill in the blairchtion.

>> when sergeant pepper came out it altered the way people thought about rock musicians. it was a serious bid for bands like the beatles around certainly the rolling stones and bob dylan of course to be perceived as artists. the music industry was driven by since, pretty much up to that point. -- by singles, pretty much up to that point. you had a hit last month what's your next song? the beatles went off the road and dioded they were going to work in the studio and they took full advantage of that. and when sergeant pepper dropped i.t. was just cataclysmic. it was the representation of the summer of love and if ways the anthem of the summer of love ♪ what would you think if i sang out a tune ♪ ♪ would you stand up and walk out on me ♪ >> it was a generational

dividing line also. those were the days of don't trust anyone over 30. and there was a sense of psychedelic drugs coming on the scene. when you come to the line, i get high with a little help from my friends, the beatles stating that so directly in a song, so massive. nobody deny that now but it was like okay, they're on our side. >> lucy in the sky with diamonds lsd. >> it was really a sense of kind of sounds silly now, but it was a sense of like envisioning a utopia. there was a real sense that a kind of revolution of consciousness was taking place and sergeant pepper became the symbol of that. ♪ loousy in the sky with diamonds ♪ >> you really don't see it now very much.

listening to an album in its entirety right? >> absolutely. it's become factionable among critics to sort of over the years pa poo poo sergeant peppe, but when you are assessing an album and whether or not it was the best, those albums were great but they didn't alter the culture. sergeant pepper altered the culture. it was very much a concert piece, why wasn't that on the album, penny lane? the beatles wanted to step back. before sergeant pepper, albums were, now you had a hit single, put ten other songs on, we'll sell it as an album. the beatles didn't want to do

that. sergeant pepper is going to be completely new, that's part of its imhact. it sound sewed fresh. >> is there one song on the album you feel is important, or one that made a real difference in the way that music moved forward? >> i think "a day in the life" was something that was completely different. ♪ i read the news today o boy ♪ about a lky man who made the grade ♪ >> it's a brilliant collaboration between le lennond mccartney. a friend of his who died, these little news items but at the same time, you have a sense of seen from the perspective of like a young person at that time, just like somehow all of this is going to disappear, you know, and we're going to enter a new age. that song conveys that very

powerfully i think. >> tell us a little bit about the significance of this being a record that signaled that the beatles weren't going to tour anymore. >> so the beatles sang, you know we go play our shores, people are screaming all the time. they're not listening to the music. we can barely hear ourselves. we're going to go into the studio. that under the stakes for them. it was a daring move and it also created an okay what are you going to come up with then if you are going to be focusing so much on this kind of private world? and it was very interesting because sergeant pepper of course opens with sounds of crowds listening to a band. it's almost like they're kind of recreating in some sense the communality of a live performance except in the studio. ♪ it was 20 years ago todayette

♪ that sergeant pepper learned to play ♪ >> he letsers learn some song we can play on the road. with all the orchestrations certainly like then would have been virtually impossible to play live. does the album stand up? >> it does. it packs a lot of power. if you take the time to listen to it, it's metropolitan meant to be a journey. when you start with the sergeant pepper theme and end with a day in the life, you really get there, you feel like you've journeyed and taken a trip and i think the beatles very consciously intended that.

>> anthony de curtis. thank you for joining us. >> i.t. was a pleasure allison. >> sreenivasan: musician gregg allman, the lead singer and co- founder of the allman brothers band, died yesterday from complications of liver cancer, at the age of 69. in 2012, the newshour's jeffrey brown sat down with allman to discuss his storied career. in this excerpt, allman revealed his doubts about his chances to become a rock star. >> reporter: there was, however, a realistic streak in young gregg allman. he writes that he had actually intended to go to college and medical school. >> i mean no pun, but everybody and their brother had a damn rock and roll band. >> reporter: so you're looking around saying-- >> i am, yes. >> reporter: we're not going to make it here. >> we're not going to make rent doing this. my brother said, "but, no, man, we're going to be the best. we're going to be number one."

♪ ♪ >> reporter: in 1971, the allmans recorded what is widely considered the finest live album ever made, "at fillmore east." ♪ ♪ it would be their ticket to stardom. but just three months after its release, duane allman was killed in a motorcycle crash in their adopted home of macon, ga. >> well, my brother died. and then it just started raining money. and, at first, you know, i screamed and yelled and shook my fist at the sky and yelled, shortchanged. >> reporter: the band members debated whether to continue. >> i told them, i said, we're going to be the wind-up bunch of street junkies, or we can forget all that crap and go back to business as usual. and it was pretty much a landslide. well, it was. >> you can see all of jeffrey brown's interview and read

about gregg allman's musical legacy at pbs.org/newshour. >> sreenivasan: finally, japanese race car driver takuma sato won today's 101st running of the indianapolis 500. he took the lead on the 195th of 200 laps and held off three-time winner helio castroneves by two- tenths of a second. sato is the first asian driver to win the race. new zealand's scott dixon, who had the fastest qualifying time, went airborne in a crash, and walked away uninjured. that's all for this edition of "pbs newshour weekend." thanks for watching. i'm hari sreenivasan. good night. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by:

bernard and irene schwartz. judy and josh weston. the cheryl and philip milstein family. the john and helen glessner family trust-- supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. sue and edgar wachenheim, iii. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. additional support has been ovided by: d by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [ theme music plays ]

-next on "great performances," how did a musical based on the life of an overlooked founding father become the hottest ticket in town? ♪ the ship is in the harbor now ♪ ♪ see if you can spot him -find out as composer lin-manuel miranda takes us on his personal journey from original inspiration to broadway sensation. -i grabbed a biography off the shelf of alexander hamilton, and i found it deeply moving and deeply personal when i read it. -♪ i'm the damn fool that shot him ♪ -something that really sort of spoke to me when i was, you know, reading this story and beginning to research and write it is that moment when we trade away capital in exchange for the debt plan. we call it "the room where it happens." -♪ i've got to be -♪ the room where it happens -♪ i've got to be -♪ the room where it happens -♪ oh, i've got to be in -♪ the room where it happens