>> rose: welcome to the program. we begin with jeff glor's conversation about i.s.i.s. and reports russian airstrikes may have killed the leader of i.s.i.s. abu bakr al-baghdadi. he talked to investigative reporter and author michael weiss. >> i take this accidentcally principally because he would not be in raqqa at this time and senior leadership would not have this high level meeting when the so-called caliphate is crumbling and raqqa is crumbling. >> rose: and we conclude with oliver stone, his documentary called "the putin interviews" premiered on showtime monday night. >> what does a director do?

i want the actor to do his best. that's not the say i'm going to leave the movie and act as his friend. maybe during the course of the movie, with mr. putin, i felt like i was keeping him interested. i was making him think, and about everything, across the board, about what's going on in the world today, and i think he said some very pregnant things about the united states and about russia. >> rose: michael weiss and oliver stone, when we continue. >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by the following: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide.

captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> glor: the russian ministry defense announced friday a russian airstrike may have killed the leader of i.s.i.s. abu bakr al-baghdadi. it is far from the first time the leader of the islamic state has been reported killed or wounded and the report remains unconfirmed. so how likely is it that baghdadi is dead and, if so, what would i.s.i.s. look like without him? michael weiss is an investigative reporter for cnn and the author of "isis: inside the army of terror." michael, good to see you. >> sure, thanks very much. >> glor: so the big qualifier is we don't know whether this was actually accurate but it was interesting because the ministry came out and said he's dead and then came out and said well we're looking at reports he's dead. what do you make of all this?

>> brought about by the defense that the ukraine said it shot him down. i don't know because all of raqqa is crumbling. it is true russia occasionally bombs in the euphrates river valley but it's not their main endeavors. this has been more about propping up assad against other rebel or opposition groups including those backed by the united states. the areas that i've heard baghdadi travels in include baj in northwest iraq recently taken over by shia militia groups. the key area, the third capital of i.s.i.s. is abukamal on the asyrian-iraqi border. i.s.i.s. relocated its media

propaganda to this town where he is more likely to hang out. it's been the gateway from syria to iraq for over ten years. >> glor: you talk about the i.s.i.s. propaganda, part of it is the russian propaganda. >> yes. >> glor: their involvement and their willingness to be seen involved is big. >> yes, and a part of the russia military doctrine is information war fair pre-seeds kinetic measure. they lie and lie very well -- well, sometimes not so well -- but this would be a piece of what is the russian strategy at the moment particularly with the donald trump presidency which is to bring the united states into the russian camp or russian orbit in their definition of a so-called war on terror. so america stop with democracy promotion and regime change, let's link arms and go after the terrorist, namely islamic terrorists. so for them to take credit and

pound their chest and say we got the world's number one bad guy is a piece of that. but they're already walking back their own assessment, he's dead to "we may have killed him." there was a russian airstrike, the pentagon confirmed that, but what and who they were hitting, we have no idea. >> glor: but we think it's much smaller than they're saying because the initial report was 300 people and baghdadi doesn't travel in groups of 300 people. >> no, he does not. there are probably less than five people on the planet who know where he is at any given time apart from his own personal entourage including his many wives and i have to be honest, sex slaves and chattel he is keeping. this is one of the most guarded men in the world. he does not talk on cell phones. when the sharia council has met before the suggestion to him was to lock your devices into

lead-lined boxes on they cannot be intercepted. russia has human and its signal intelligence. the warlord president of chechnya has sort of more than hinted that he's been dispatching spice into i.s.i.s. to join i.s.i.s. from the caucuses and chechnya, in particular, to gat evidence and so on and so forth. i.s.i.s. claimed they executed some of these spice one of them which is memorably eulogized sort of authenticating that view. so i.s.i.s. is infiltrated by various intelligence agencies including russian security services but i don't think they have better detail and information than what the coalition has because the coalition exclusively is going after this group. >> glor: how do baghdadi's travels and secrecy differ from bin laden and zarqawi's? >> zarqawi was a little sloppier. you have to remember the reason america was able to get zarqawi

is the jordanians had been following him since his debut as a wanna be jihadi who had gone to afghanistan twice and come back. the u.s. was able to reverse engineer where he was by doing these opportunistic raids into other areas and gathering this digital information. american special forces are doing the psalm thing now trying to find out where baghdadi and the inner sanctum of i.s.i.s. is. that's what i mean. america has a more true presence in the caliphate than russia has. if this information had come out from, say, iran or some of the shia militia groups in iraq, i would still treat it with a huge barrel of salt, but i would be more inclined to believe that version than the russian version of events. >> glor: speaking of the kill, we are coming up on the third anniversary of the declaration of the caliphate from baghdady. i guess this strike would have happened exactly one month before, may 28th, june 28th,

2014, was the declaration. he is and they are in a much different spot than three years ago. >> absolutely. they have lost most of the terrain that they at one point held. i would air view that i.s.i.s. surprised and impressed itself in 2014. they bit off more than they could choose, took huge swaths of territory, which i think is why their collapse has been more precipitous than we ants paid. but let's not confuse the shrinking expense in syria and iraq with diminished capability to strike in the west and conduct terror operations. the former headquarters of i.s.i.s.'s c.i.a., theirer foreign intelligence branch was retaken by turkey in a town called al-bab in aleppo. they've gone outside syria through turkey, i'm told, one guy wound up in europe, according to my sources. can't confirm but that's what i

get when i talk to people inside i.s.i.s. territory. just this week, it was reported they are surging in afghanistan in such a way they blew up a shia mosque in kabul on ramadan, well a piece of their genocide project with all shia. they're becoming internationalized. they're anticipating their collapse in syria and iraq and looking to establish networks and cells elsewhere. >> glor: i was going to say, after baghdadi was reportedly killed again, after this may 28th date, there was the attack in kabul, in tehran, in london. >> yeah. >> glor: it all continued unabated. >> exactly. again, i.s.i.s., it's a miscon accepts and sometimes the media plays into this wrongly. it has always been i.s.i.s.'s strategy the do what they are doing now, to hit london, to hit paris, to hit brussels, to hit the united states. the difference was zarqawi never got that plank of his global

conspiracy off the ground nearly so well as these guys. so while it is true they are probably emphasizing or trying to accelerate foreign attacks as they continue to lose ground in syria and iraq, this is always part of the grand plan, and they have already made preparations for when raqqa falls, and mosul falls to fan out, that's why you see them in southeast asia and trying to make inroads. attacking iran for them had been unprecedented. in fact, they blamed bin laden and al quaida specifically for preventing sunni jihadis from attacking iraq. >> glor: tehran, that surprised you? >> it didn't surprise me. it surprised me it took that line. when al quaida and i.s.i.s. broke ranks with each other 2013-2014, that to me signaled the safeguard, the stopping

mechanism that al quaida h.q. had placed on what once was its affiliate in iraq and was no more and namely that safeguard was don't go after the iranians and there's a letter written by the i.s.i.s. spokesman to czar wa which that said for years you told us the avoid the hub of shia in iran, so now all bets are off and they feel brazen and reckless enough to hit the islamic rep lek at home. >> glor: you mention places like mosul, they're not giving those places up. >> their idea is fight to the last man but that's as defined by leadership. they're leaving a garrison of # hundred or maybe more fighters to really bleed and cause the immense suffering of not just the civilian population but

incoming shia militia groups, iraqi security forces, armier, and any american troops. the brass ring is killing americans for them. but whilst doing this and also plunging the country into the state of chaos and disarray, they are forward-thinking, they're preparing for the future. and one of the, in terms of territory in this part of the world, anyway, it's a return to the cow patches in the countryside, the euphrates river valley. so that's where they were able to repair in 2009, 2010 when they had more or less been strategically defeated in iraq. there was a joke amongst people living with them saying what emirate? this is the emirate of the desert you crated. they're prepared to do that over again and wait out the united states when it says mission accomplished and goes home. >> glor: so you lose mosul and iraq, it's a shifting battlefield. >> i have a map here and if we could zoom out i could show you

the enormous badland area in syria and iraq where people don't live. you have bed owen treebs. these guys can hold up much like al quaida in the mountains of afghanistan and pakistan. >> glor: the u.s. is putting focus on southwestern syria. >> yeah. >> glor: why is that? this is an interesting state of affairs and marks a bit of departure in the way america is now involved itself in syria. senior white house official stated it as such. we are now at a point in the war where our anti-i.s.i.s. strategy is colliding with iran's expansionist strategy. what do i mean by that? it's been reported in the guardian, elsewhere, the israelis certainly believe it, the brits i know for sure believe it and the americans are coming around to the idea that it's true, iran is looking to construct a land bridge or a direct line of communication so that they can literally drive men and material from tehran to

the mediterranean coast, assad's original. they moved southward because the americans are too chock-a-bloc in the north. the american foot frint deterred iran from northern syria now they're going through southern syria, but again america has an opposition force it's backing, there are about 200 vetted syrian rebels america has been relying upon to fight i.s.i.s. in that area. and three times now iranian-backed militias, these guys are trained and armed by the i.r.g.c., three times they had provoked our forces and three times the u.s. struck them from the air. and the u.s. has made it very clear if they continue to antagonize our forces in the southwest, we will continue to strike back. >> i want to talk about what

i.s.i.s. or islamic state would look out without abu bakr al-baghdadi. he's 46 years old, yeah. >> where would it go next and how capably would it continue on with what it has been doing now? >> i think with anything we've learned in the last almost 15 years about this organization, it has evolved, it has metamorphsized time and again, but it's proven to be incredibly resilient. he would be, in effect, depends on which counterterrorism geek you're talking to, either the fourth or third man in charge to have been bumped off. i would be very surprised if they haven't got somebody next in line or a series of candidates next in line. the difficulty is baghdadi claims he is a descendent from the house of the prophet of muhamad. i.s.i.s. doesn't have many people like that. they can rewrite their covenants. there is a core to i.s.i.s., and when push comes to shove,

they're happy to rewrite laws to accommodate reality. i'm less interested in who heads the organization than the middle cadres that are filling it out. the trend in the last 18 months to two years, i call it the europeanization of i.s.i.s., but that's almost a misnomer. a lieutenant of people from russian-speaking territories, central asia, the former soviet republics coming in and because these guys have served in the military of their native countries and they're pretty bad as if you ask american soldiers who have seen them in action, they're the ones we have to be more worried about. i.s.i.s. is changing from the predominantly from the arabic to a lot of russian speakers, french speakers, french speakers. >> glor: and remain far more capable to strike france or europe than the united states.

>> yes, yes graphically. so sews logically, culturally, the united states has had a much better record of muslim independenintegration. most muslims in the united states if they see something say something. they would not abide by one of the paris attackers cooking up chemical weapons in the apartment next door. in europe, i lived in london two and a half years, i understand the difficulty of state multiculturalism in that country, it's easier. popopulations come over who dont feel a part of their own system and re-create their native lands in european soils. i.s.i.s. is using those constituencies and communities to recruit and radicalize. we see it time and time again. you don't have to have gone to syria and have weapons training and made your way across the continent. you can stay where you are and watch videos on youtube or twitter and get instructions for

how the build a pipe bomb, a rudimentary weapon or buy a knife in the u.k. and go on a stabbing spree, we've seen that,ta. here it's proven to be more difficult but not impossible and we have to be on guard for it coming here. >> glor: the indoctrination, what's the message? what are they telling their treen eyes about what's happening in europe and the u.s.? >> they say this is a war against islam perpetrated by the crusaders zionists of the united states. the crusaders from baghdadi not long after they declared their caliphate is today the global muslim community, but not shia, facing an international conspiracy headed by the united states, backed by russia and of course the jews and abetted by iran and the rafida which is the

bigoted term used to describe all she. i can't the groups claiming to be fighting i.s.i.s., albeit i.s.i.s. not muslims, are at war with islam. if you're a kid and angry at western foreign policy, you know, it's very, very easy to get access to this cooped of information and pro propaganda. it's true twitter accounts get taken offline and you tube videos get taken offline but these guys have gone to ground more than physically. they're using telegraph and encrypted messaging to get their propaganda out there. >> glor: it's interesting when they try to confirm whether something like this is true, the first place they look is social immediate yarchlt. >> true. russia, first few weeks in

syria they kept producing videos they hit i.s.i.s. then you had groups debunk the videos and say you've provided us the evidence to disprove what you said. we located this video and terrain as 100 miles away from where you said it happened, and it happened two tuesdays ago, not yesterday. this is why i'm reluctant with the m.o.d. and their statements. >> glor: and their response is typically faster to confirm a death, it typically happens within days. >> yeah, depends. it can take much longer. the main way or the easiest way to confirm the death of a jihadi figure is when his own organization confirms it and then, you know, writes his obituary. we haven't seen that with baghdadi yet. and again, you know, if he were dead and i.s.i.s. were driven into some kind of internal disarray, it could take months before they acknowledge the fact but i have seen no evidence to suggest that he's been taken out of the field. in fact, there's a good report

in the guardian by my friend martin shlaf who was in one of the areas where baghdadi was hanging out before iraq was taken, the incoming militia said we feel he's here. this has the making in terms of the infrastructure and the safe houses, this looks like a place a top dog would have been hiding very recently. >> glor: you heard that with bin laden a lot. >> i lost count of the number of times that the former leader of the main insurgency in the caucuses was said to have been killed by the fsb. rumors of my death have been greatly exam rated never more so than the war on terror. >> glor: michael weiss, "isis: inside the army of terror." we appreciate it. >> sure. pleasure. >> rose: oliver stone is here. he's used films such as platoon, j.f.k. and last year's snowden to challenge the prevailing

narrative. for his latest project stone charts another contrary course to let russian president vladimir putin to explain the world as he sees it. over the course of nearly two years the two men sat down for a series of wide' ranging conversations. stone's goal he says was to listen to president putin and see if we can understand what he wants. here's a look at the president putin interviews. >> all right, ready? action! a lot of western people don't know much about you. we would like to know about your background and where you calm from. your critics say that russia is a traditional authoritarian state. in a hot war with russia, is the u.s. dominant? most americans think rust is as bad as the u.s. when it comes to

surveillance. f.b.i., c.i.a. and n.s.a. believed russia hacked the election. people say trump is in the kremlin's pocket. >> rose: i'm pleased to have oliver stone back at this table. welcome. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: so it's all over. tell me how you feel about it. >> it was about 20 hours altogether with him over two years, four different visits, and it was a massive amount of material to organize. it ended up being four hours because basically i felt that was a natural pattern. it started in about 2000 when he becomes president and there's quite a thick history where you pick up in 2000 with u.s. relations and works its way forward to the 2007 munich speech and ends up, of course, with ukraine and syria and then

post that, a new crisis develops with the election. so one thing after another. there will be another crisis i'm sure, but right now it's as pretty bleak as it's ever been in terms of temperature. >> rose: and who does he blame for that? >> i never heard him in the two years bad mouth anybody. i mean that. you would think hillary clinton and so on and so forth. no. he said very, i think, kind things about her, that she was a dynamic woman, he respected her deeply. i didn't feel that he was trying to lash out. i felt he was trying to explain the russian position as best he could to a foreigner. >> rose: how dud you see your role there? >> well, he knows i'm a dramatist, i'm a movie director, and i approached him as such. i was working on the snowden film in germany and traveling to moscow to see ed snowden who was giving me his point of view and helping us to make this movie.

sometime in that period, i ran into mr. putin and talked to him about the snowden affair. he told me his version of it which is in the film, very interesting, different point of view, and from that grew kind of a warmer relationship. i think he knew my work from "untold history of the united states." that was shown in russia on their top channel, very successful. he knew some of my work as a filmmaker, and we asked for a longer interview. it started like that. we never knew how defined it would be. it was sort of a loosie goosie arrangement. if he liked it and wanted to continue, we would continue. >> rose: there's been some criticism as you know to flattering, not challenging enough, all of those things, and you must have a point of view on that because you chose the technique you thought would be more effective in accomplishing what your goals were. >> when you see somebody for 20 hours in front of a camera, as you well know, it's hard to -- you do see character.

you get the sense of the person, and asking them the questions i did over that period of time, you have to realize, i get a very strong view of them but i'm listening, i'm watching. as i said, i wasn't arguing the issues with him. the issues, he knows his way and the americans have their viewpoint. i don't want to get in between that. i wanted to understand what he's saying. so i'm encouraging him to speak. i'm listening very closely. i'm trying not to make a fool of myself by asking the same questions again. i think he was interested. i think he was challenged by my approach because it was dramatic at times and he felt like i was challenging -- he felt i was interested. >> rose: i feel when you challenge someone, the best of them comes out rather than being simply someone who's there simply to say, you know, tell me

your story. >> no, i didn't say that. i think you saw the questions. they're all over the place. i pressed him at times. i went into the future. i went into the elections. i went into the concept of at the mock si. i went into the concept of power itself. he's been there for 16 years, not always as president, but three times as a prime minister. what's he going to do in his fourth term? is he going to run fourth term as president like a roosevelt? these questions come up, are you addicted to power? you've seen the last reel, the last hour, so you saw where it went. it does get touchy. i had a sense he always controlled himself, a calm, cultured man, articulate man. he thinks before he speaks, and i think he is intrigued, the way he answered some of these questions. he certainly has a sense of humor. ppened when the collapse of the soviet union came and

gorbachev made a basic decision. >> he describes gorbachev and he is an idealist and not as a practical man and as a failure as a leader. most of the soviet union fell apart and so many russians ended up outside of borders overnight, over 20 million, outside their borders without -- this was a severe cutting. the united states, of course, encouraged a completely wild kind of capitalism at that time. we lent them some money, not much, but we encouraged them to privatize everything. the '90s was a terrible period. i don't think americans sometimes realize how bad it was, so that even yeltsin lost his rudder because in the '96 election, yeltsin would not have won it. it was american support. we sent in election teams and

i.m.f. money and that kept yeltsin going. he was our guy, clinton loved him. n.a.t.o. expanded in '99. that was a big move because the brsh administration, the father and baker, there was a promise given to gorbachev n.a.t.o. would end and not move one inch to the east of germany. not one inch to the east. that was clear cut. gorbachev repeated this over and over. >> rose: and you would add to that that putin and other russian leaders feared invasion of their borders. they feared napoleon and hitler, so they have a natural sense of concern about losing their borders. >> through their borders, they have been insided by germany twice in this century and by the french and entering the revolution there was a tremendous civil war in russia, i think 18 armies fought against the new regime in moscow and invaded from all the areas

including the western border, poland was one of their worst enemies. so they went through a lot. world war ii they took the brunt of the war. every five or six german soldiers killed in the war was on the eastern front. soviet casualties, 25 million to 27 million people disappeared during that period. it was a tremendous sacrifice, and america was very -- should have been even more grateful but because mr. roosevelt died -- we went into that on untold history -- mr. truman didn't have the same attitude as roosevelt. roosevelt saw a grand alliance between the soviet union, britain, china and the united states. that grand alliance never materialized. he died in april of 45. >> rose: his sense of presence. >> yes, though i give him credit for trying things. i don't think he's a natural horseback rider. he became one. hockey at age 61 or 62, he took it up for the first time. he's no skater. i saw him in one scene in the

film at the hockey rink. he formed an old man's league where they come together and play, very popular in russia because they love hockey. he's not very good. we had a little fun with it. he scored a couple of goals. i don't think you could say competitive hockey, but it was fun to watch. he speaks impeccable german. he learned a little bit of this language, that language. he learned a little piano. he's a man who -- i saw him, charlie, not much social life at all. i think he works a lot. i think he's -- you know, 16 years, 12 hours a day, he's pretty steady. when he left sometimes at 1:00 in the morning, he would say he had another meeting to go to with the economics minister or the minister of defense. i found him to be highly disciplined. i was almost worried about him. there's a scene in the first chapter where i'm talking about

reagan, comparing him to reagan, sort of asking him if he can slow down and enjoy his life, can he delegate authority like reagan did so he could relax more. >> rose: what did he say? he said his situation in russia was so dire, when he came into office, that there's no -- there was no margin for error. >> rose: i want to show clips. this is about nuclear arms and just to hear him talking about the nuclear arms race during the cold war and the similar dangers of not engaging in a dialogue today. vladimir putin, oliver stone, here it is. ( through interpreter ) : the united states created the nuclear program. russia had both russian scientists working --

>> right. ( interpreter inaudible )

>> so stop referring to them as partners, our partners. you've said that too much. >> very much his manner. he really doesn't give up. he stays at the table and he will talk and try to make a piece. this is his nature. this raises the whole another i uh issue of nuclear parody which is very important to all of us. he's saying basically that with the american abrogation of the a.b.m. treaty in 2001 under george bush, the nuclear balance is starting to change -- >> rose: they're spending a lot of money on defense systems and he says therefore russia will have to meet that with more offensive weapons. >> not just defense systems. the a.b.m.s, they've already put them into poland and romania, and the given is the

protection against iran. >> rose: basically the u.s. said they were not aimed toward russia, they're aimed toward iran. >> that's not really true. also he point out in another section how the a.b.m.s can be converted in a matter of hours into an offensive missile. so the russians would not know what was in the air if it was coming to them. they wouldn't know if it was defensive or offensive missile. so a lot of confusion on the missile. we try to show on the maps how they're surrounding on the north, east and west by u.s. missiles, polaris, subs, bombers, alaska all the way through the northern arctic, it's quite as in we have around them and with the n.a.t.o. countries now, the 13 countries that have joined the n.a.t.o. union since '99 with clinton, the russian border is worse than ever. the hitler troops could be

closer. >> rose: this is his version of russia, and you're there listening and recording and that's basically the kind of film you wand to make. >> i think i countered with other questions to explain the situation. >> rose: basically, you believe in what he said. you believe he told the truth. you believe what he said is what you believe to be history as well. >> the way he sees his history -- i know enough about history to know there are two sides to every story and i've heard the u.s. side. >> rose: it's giving him the opportunity to tell his side of the story. that's what you presented here. >> what's wrong with that. >> rose: nothing. i'm trying to get you to acknowledge -- >> i think it's his side of the story, he asked -- >> rose: and you basically agree with his side of the story. >> i didn't say that. >> rose: well then tell me. i analystenning to his side of the story. wanted to hear it.thing. i heard the u.s. version because we see it in our papers all the time, in our media, but i have

not heard him. i didn't know much about the munich speech, i didn't know what he was doing at munich until astudied it. i didn't know the crimea speech that he gives, too. these are point we don't hear in the west. i've never seen an interpretation of his in the western media of the ukraine. >> rose: there is also this, the meddling in the u.s. election. what does he say? >> you saw it. >> rose: yeah. i pressed him on it. he denies it completely. >> rose: end of story? in the film, he denies it. they tonight meddle in domestic policies of other countries. >> rose: but he allows i think in his own press conferences, he allows that some people from russia might have done it? >> he said that but he doesn't know -- independent hackers, this is a very confusing subject, charlie, hacking. >> rose: there is a central conversation in washington about something we call the russian

probe, an investigation as to whether the impact of russia's hacking, attempting to hack the american election. now, most of the american intelligence agencies believe they did. most of the majority of american people in congress believe they did. now, he obviously says he didn't but it's the subject of conversation. >> yeah. yes. we can talk about it but we would be speculating. all i've seen, i've read the report, i've seen the speculation, i hear people saying it's a fact, but the report doesn't read like that. it's an assessment given basically by the c.i.a. and n.s.a. and f.b.i. and, you know, given the history of our intelligence and of our intelligence agencies, i would be very suspect of them and their motives. what does a director do? you've had me and your table with actors.

here's an actor i like and i'm very proud of the job he's done in the film, i'm rooting for him during the course of the movie, i want him to do good, his best. that's not to say i'm going to leave the movie about act as his friend. it's just during the course of the movie. with mr. putin, i felt like i was interested -- i was keeping him interested, i was making him think about everything across the board, about what's going on in the world today and i think he said some very pregnant things about the united states and about russia. he was always hopeful about bringing it back together again, we could be partners in terrorism and space. >> rose: he believes that? i do. >> rose: does he? he does, definitely. in syria, he was effective with his bombing campaign. it was short and brutal against i.s.i.s. >> rose: it was not short and brutal against i.s.i.s., that's simply not true. >> obama had been bombing there for four years. >> rose: but oliver, it was

short and brutal against the opponents of assad. he's told me i'm going in there to prop up the guy we're supporting who's asked me to come in. it was not short and brutal against i.s.i.s. they'd not turn to i.s.i.s. till late in the game and didn't do a whole lot with i.s.i.s. you can't walk away from this movie without understanding how vladimir putin sees the world. that's clear, you walk away with the understanding of how he sees the world. >> what's wrong with it? >> rose: to make the point doesn't mean there is i didn't think wrong with it. that's my point to you. understanding how he sees the world, that position should be clalgd, and your argument as to whether you may or may not have challenged it is we know that side, we know the opposition to putin and the people who believe and argue they have plenty of evidence that he and russia tried to meddle in the u.s. elections, they have seen the hacking and they don't know where the hacking came from. >> it was a sloppy hack. there were footprints left

behind and every expert i read said that if the russians were to do it, they wouldn't do it this way. >> rose: you were saying to me then that oliver stone does not believe it was the russians who tried to hack the u.s. elections. >> i don't believe so, no. >> rose: i have two last questions for you because you and i have had many good exchanges here at this table. >> yeah, i know. i know. >> rose: what is et that i have not said or asked about this film that you think is important for you to say that the film says or that you want the say? >> look, i don't think you've seen vladimir putin speak and say the things he has here. i haven't heard this. it tells you what he's seen -- the world as he's seen it since 2000. that's pretty important. >> rose: whether it is the truth or not, it is his view of the world and that's important to know. >> yes. >> rose: and a lot of people, c.i.a. and we have else, try to understand what he thinks and what he believes. they do. they will be looking at this and

see some layers they missed. >> rose: secondly, there is also a sense that, as president obama said, you know, there's hardly anything that goes on in russia, you know, that vladimir putin doesn't know about or have -- okay, bear with me -- have some impact over. there have been political assassinations, there have been the killing of journalists in russia. some of them and some people look at those events and they blame the man at the top. >> yes, well, yeah. >> rose: that either he knew about it or ordered it. >> well -- >> rose: did you ask him about that? and what hi -- what did he say? >> no, i didn't, but i certainly have done a lot of research and had other conclusions and i didn't feel he would say anything to me in that regard except to say no he didn't do it and i didn't think it would get anywhere. frankly, any evidence i read

implying he is guilty is phony, bogus, comes from internet-type notes, it didn't hold and i've talked to experts on this but i don't want to get into this. >> rose: but on the subject of political assassinations and on upthe subject of opponents and the jailing of journalists and even as of yesterday a political opponent being held for a while -- >> well -- >> rose: -- you simply believe it's not his responsibility, he had nothing to do with any of those? >> you make it sound as if -- no -- i don't exactly what political opposition candidate you're talking about yesterday. >> rose: avalni -- they have permits in the vietnam war to protest and permits to occupy wall street.

when you protest a government, there is a limit to what a government can put up with. some of these russian protests have been on the edge of saying overthrow the government. you have to be careful. the united states would not tolerate it for one second if we wanted to overthrow the u.s. government. i look at the murders as another issue completely. each one of these cases just doesn't hold water. >> rose: the book is called "the putin interviews" forwarded by robert scheuer. vladimir putin, enemy of the united states, we should try to understand him. >> yes. >> rose: thank you for coming. for more, we turn to interviews of experts. >> you do realize how powerful your answer could be if you said suddenly you prefer x candidate,

he would go like that tomorrow, and if you say you didn't like trump or something, right, what would happen? he would win, right? you have that amount of power in the u.s. >> (interpreter inaudible). you're credited with doing many fine thence many your first term. you built up industries, electronics, engineering, petrochemical, agriculture. you raised the g.d.p., you raised the income. you reformed the army, you resolved the chechen war. the privatization was stopped. you're a real son of russia. >> well, it's not exactly like that.

>> -- not to stop the prioritization. >> let me ask you, i'm sure you must have as an ex-kgb agent you must have hated what snowden did with every fiber of your being.

>> (inaudible). did you agree with what he did snorchlts. did. >> no. did you think the national security agency had gone too far in its eavesdropping? >> yes. ( interpreter inaudible ) >> but he should not have whistled -- you're saying he should not have whisten blown and resigned on the principle like mr. putin did when he

resigned from the k.g.b. >> i'i just fell asleep upstairs but i caught up on my jetlag. house of your day -- how was your day? >> holy cow. well, you didn't have a cabinet meeting then, did you? >> (inaudible). i'm told there was a national security kind of meeting?

>> (inaudible). a crisis or anything? i'm just asking because i'm curious because we're normally scheduled at 3:00 and it's six hours and 40 minutes later. >> have some rest and some -- ( laughter ) >> rose: "the putin interviews" on showtime. on the next charlie rose, the comedian and actor aziz asari on episode master of none. >> the episode about our parents tack off and came from a place of alan and i being curious about the struggles of our parents and our journey here. >> rose: what dead you accomplish in season one? what did you want to accomplish in season one other than the establish character? >> well, i think in season one we wanted to make a show we thought was good and met our own standards and what it ended up

doing went far beyond our expectations. the show got a lot of press and stuff just for the idea of someone that looks like me being a romantic lead and it was not stuff we thought about at all. people were, like, oh, my god, the show is so diverse, and i'm, like, when he and alan have fun it's pretty diverse but we don't think about that. it's not diverse. it's our lives. that's what it's like when we're having lunch. >> rose: do you stay away from sexually explicit stuff? do you stay away from that as much as you can? >> we write what is interesting to us. in the first scenes there were things more sexually explicit. we did an episode about mornings which is a long term relationship and you saw different mornings and you saw how the sex became boring for this couple and how something like when they'd have, you know,

sex on a chair or something at first was very exciting and then became routine. it was fun to write it, then we had to film it. then this season there is no sexually explicit stuff. there's a couple of things. but the main romantic arc is with this woman that my character meets in italy enamed francesca and it's more internal and emotional and inspired a lot by these films i was watching a lot and trying to show more of an internal drama. >> rose: that drives the second season? >> that's the main. you know, the second half of the second season, when it gets to my character, it's kind of about him exploring this relationship and in the beginning he's kind of dating around and just trying that connection and we do an episode about him being on a dating app and you see him doing through the monotony of dating. really, it's about this guy trying to do what me and alan

and other people are doing and trying to feigned a connection. >> rose: you spent a month alone in italy? >> i was there about two months. i kind of did what the character did and went to a small town where we ended up filming. i went there, didn't know anybody. >> rose: speak italian? i took three weeks of italian classes with the teacher in new york before i went. i wasn't very good. when you learn in those kind of situations you speak very formal and people make fun of you as soon as you get there. but uh didn't know anybody. i had a couple of friends of friends. i worked in the pasta shop that you see in the opening of the show, and also the restaurant that we eat at in the first episode, and a little bit in the french restaurant reeat at in the second episode. i learned how to make pasta and speak italian better. i really tid it in the beginning for research for the show but it ended up being something really valuable for me aziz the real

person as well just to kind of live somewhere else besides new york or l.a. and be out of that environment. i realized how much time i spent in new york and l.a. which are two very crazy places and it was nice to live somewhere small. >> rose: do they have the same cast of characters you can find someone to play off of? >> there, i didn't know anybody and when we do the episodes there, we didn't use any of the characters from the first season. the first episode, it was a bit of a challenge because it's like we're not bringing back any of the characters. it's in italy, not in new york, it's in black and white, mostly italian. that person was tricky. i feel like we pulled it off. in the second one, arnold comes and visits me. in real life, eric is one of my best friends and he came to visit me. and when he came to visit me, i was, like, come visit me for a week. i'm sure something will happen

we can put in the show. and sure enough, we went to sisly together and we were driving around and saw a very small alley and the g.p.s. turned into this alley and he said i don't think we can do it and we saw a truck barrel through and we said we'll be fine and we pulled the mirrors in and got stuck which is a scene we ended up putting in the show. >> all right. so we take a left here? yeah, foreign policy says take a left down this alley. >> i don't know, looks pretty tight. >> i think it will be fine. let's just fold the mirrors in. let's go. just take it slow. looking good. slow, slow. you're good on this side. >> it's really tight over here, man. >> you've got a little space here. just go to the right a little bit.

easy easy. >> got room over there? yeah, yeah. wait wait wait wait! ooh, ya! keep going. >> i can't, we're (bleep) stuck. what? you said we're good on that side. >> then i said wait wait wait! what the (bleep) do we do? i don't know, man. oh, man, we're really stuck! try to reverse ( revving ) >> give it more gas! i am, we're not moving! ( honking ) cars are filing up! this is my worst nightmare, man. >> rose: for more about this program and earlier episodes,, visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide.

when a judge said, punishable by death, i lost it. >> they're moving. funny. and surprising. inmates perform their own stories. >> when you're in prison for so long, you get used to one costume and it's blue. >> for one of the toughest audiences anywhere. >> we all look like smurfs in here. >> hello, and welcome. i'm swee vu. a kqed special. many inmates are doing time for crimes like murder and assault. most will be released back into our communities. once known for its violence today, san quentin has some of the most rehabilitative in the california prison system. we'll talk to