captioning sponsored by , newshour productioc >> woodruff: good evening, i'm judy woodruff. on the newshour tonight, questions emerge for the porresident-- a new r contains questions it says special counsel robert mueller wants to ask mr. trump about his ties to russia d whether he bstructed justice. then, the second part of my interview with former f.b.i. director james comey. we discuss the hillary clinton emails, the role played by former attorney general loretta lynch and hard decisions the f.b.i. faced in 2016. plus, rethinking community college: how one school is aking it easier for low-income students to stay on track and graduate. a >> zes me all the things that i didn't know, that i needed to know, to be successful, simple things, like etting out my calendar, and

scheduling everything around school. >> woodruff: all that and more oghn tonit's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> knowdge, it's where nnovation begins. it's what leads us to discovery and motivates us to succeed. iout's why we ask the t questions and what leads us to the answers. at leidos, we're standing behind those working to improve thh, world's heaafety, and efficiency. leidos. > kevin. >> kevin!

>> kevin. >> advice for life. life well-planned. learn more at raymondjames.com. >> babbel. a language rp that teaches l-life conversations in a new language, like spanish, french, german, italian, and more. babbel's 10-15 minute lessons are available as an app, or onlne. more information on babbel.com. >> rtd with the ongoing suppo of these institutions: >> this program was made possible by the corporation for .ublic broadcasti and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. > woodruff: the trum administration has given itself another 30 days to decide

wther to impose tariffs o foreign steel and aluminum from key u.s. allies. it granted the extension last night to the european union, canada and mexico, amid ongoing trade negotiations but in a statement today, the european commission criticized the reprieve, saying, "as a longstanding partner and friend of the u.s., we will not negotiate under threat." the united nation's nuclear watchdog confirmed today it's found no evidence of iran having lear weapons program aft 2009. but the agency says iran did have a coordinated nuclear program before 2003. that comes a day after israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu accused iran of continuing to pursue nuclear weapons development, and breaking the iran nuclear deal. he provided no direct evidence that iran violated the 2015 agreement. throday, pushed back.

>> ( translated ): we accepted to suspend our nuclear program on a condition of canceling all sanctions. and if the u.s. economic sldanctions return, there we no justification in front of the iranian public opinion and the ienranian parlito stay in this deal. >ff> woodmeanwhile, the white house says a "clerical error" led to a drastic change in a statement itssued yesterday, following netanyahu's claims. the initial release rea"iran has a robust, clandestine nuclear wpons program." the white house later corrected it to read that a program.such today, white house press secretary sah sanders said iran's nuclear weapons program was much further along at20he time of th5 iran deal. >> we immediately corrected it. but again i think the biggest mistake is the fact that the u.s. ever entered in iran deal in the first place. that to me seems to be the biggest mistake in this process.

not a simple typo that was immediately corrected. the problem is that the deal was made on a completely false pretense, iran lied on front end. they were dishonest actors. and so the deal that was made was made on things that were inaccurate. >> woodruff: sanders would not answer today if iran is currently in compliance with the deal, as the nuclear watchdog hteas repy confirmed. syrian state media and a watchdog group said at least 23 ckiivilians wered by air strikes in one of the country's last remaining islaelc state- henclaves today. nearly half of those deaths were c the bombardment struck a northeast province where the u.sled coalition and kurdis forces are fighting to drive out isis. ilyt wasn't immedialear who launched the strikes. ilon nigeria, a pair of eons killed at least 28 people at a mosque in the northeastern town f mubi today. one witness said a suicide bomber detonated a device durin

morning prayers, blowing the roof off the building. ad secast killed worshippers as they fled. loc officials believed the militant group boko haram was to blame. armenia's opposition leader warned of a "political tsunami" today, after parliament voted down his bid to become the country's prime minister. nikol pashinian ran unopposed after leading calls for rmenia's last prime nister to step down last month. tens othousands of pashinian's supporters protested the result in the streets of the capital -- and they vowed to keep up their fight. >> ( translated ): people are upset. but this is not the end, this is only the beginning. people will unite. more people will join in. nikol just said that there will bile so many people that it not be possible to count. we will definitely win. >> woodruff: armenn 's constitutquires its parliament to hold another vote for prime minister xt week. south korea's president moon

jhaae-iasked the united nations to verify the north's planned shutdown of its marn nucest site. the north's kim jong-un agreed to close the site at a historic summit last friday. as part of their agreement, both the south and the north also dismantled dozens of rge speakers today along thshared border that had been used to blare propaganda.a ustralian cardinal george pell pleaded not guilty today to decades of sex abuse charges, setting the stage for arial by jury. pell appeared in court in melbourne. he's the highest-ranking vatica official to be charged in the catholic church's see scandal. the allegations stem from the 1970s to the 1990s, when pell was archbishop of melbourne. back in this country: california and 16 other states are suing the trump administration over its plan to roll back vehicle emissions and gas mileage standards. the environmental protection

agency decided to scrap an obama-era rule requiring new vehicles to get 36 miles per gallon by 2025. in sacramento, california governor jerry brown insisted easing emissions standards will d >> we're losing the battle on climate change. we've got to step up our efforts or things will get dramatically worse, irrevib so if we don't make a big turn. al part of that big turn w be in the combustion engine, zero a-emission vehicl all the other things we're trying to do. >> woodruff: the states named in tthhe lawsuit argue tha e.p.a.'s effort to loosen emissions rules violates the clean air act. two top aides to embattled e.p.a. chief scott pruitt stepped down today, amid federal ethics investigations. albert kelly, a former banker who ran the e.p.a.'s superfund program, and security chief pasquale "nino" perottahe

submitted resignations. pruitt gave no reason for their departures. but both men's names had been mentioned in ongoing probes into pruitt's ethics and travel. and stocks were mixed on wall street today. the dow jones industrial average lost 64 points to close at 24,099. the nasdaq rose 64 points, and the s&p 500 added six. still to come on the newshour: more of my interview with former f.b.i. director james comey. what's next for the caravan of immigrants that has reached the u.s., mexico border. and rethinking what it means to be a college student, and much more.

>> woodruff: special counsel rmuoberler has a list of almost 50 questions for president trump, as part of the investigation into possible ties ndo russiabstruction of justice. that's according to a "new york times" report out today. mr.rump's legal team has no publicly confirmed if he will sanit down fonterview. but the president did weigh in on twitter, calling release of the questions "so disgraceful" and repeating the probe is a "russian witch hunt." we breakdown it all down with former federal prosecutor matthew olsen. e also served as senior counsel to mueller in 2005. matthew olsen, thank you for being back with us. >> thanks for having me. >> woodruff: we appreciate it. so what do you makq of those stions overall in "the new york times" said they were rad by the speciasel cos investigators to the president's lawyers who then compiled them idnto a list. they seem authentic? >> well, my initial reaction is it's a little unusual, actually quite unusual for a prosecutor

to give a witness a list of questions written out or even ery verbatim in the way these questions. are it does strike me as unusual. it would be more common to give a witness maybe a couple of top uareas or subjects, but these are very specific questions, so it strikes me as odd.od >> ff: so of course it raises the question, what concern what was the genesis of this and if "the new york times" hasn't said of course who the source was, but if the source believed them to be accurate, then it leaves one wondering how this all came about. >> it sure does. t some level regardless of how we got them or how "the new york times" received them, they do offer a really fascinating look inside where the special counsel's investigation is at this stage. for one, it shows how wide ranging the scope is. it extends obviously from whether there was collusion during the election all the way to the obstructiotin of j potential charges. so it's a wide-ranging scope. >> woodruff: i wanted to ask

about that. so what are the signposts that you see here, because they range, there are questions about... in fact, there are questions that point to possible collusion. the president tweeted they move that's not what mueller is o after, bue of the questions was about, you know, did you know that your former campaign manager, paul manafort, was approaching the russians for some sort of assistance? >> exactly right, judy. at least a dozen of the questions go directly to this question of coordination or collusion between the campaign and the russians, and in particular they specifically go to the president's own state of mind, what did he know about whether paul manafort and others were cooperating with t russians. at what point did he learn about that? what was his reaction toe th events as they were playing out during the first year of his presidcy. so the signposts are that they're vy interested in, the special counsel is very

interested about learning what tanhe president kne when he knew it, very reminiscent of watergate. > woodruff: and there were questions of the president's close friend roger stone who was advising him at different points during the campaign. there are all different points where there could have been a russia connection. >> absolutely. f you look at the questions as reported in the "new york times," it talks about what then preswas doing and what he knew about people like general flynn, jim comey, you know, and at each stage what did the president know about tse individuals during the time frame that they were actually involvein whether in flynn's case being fired and iy'n co case being fired, as well. >> woodruff: it seems to pointti to qus of obstruction of justice, the firing of comey, the flynn situation, and a number of others. the treatment of jeff sessions, the attorney general. is that how you see some of

these questions? >> as exactly how i see it. if you look at what happened during the first year of the trump presidency and basically what the president was saying and what he was doing, questions go to what was in his mind, what was his intent, and he in any criminal probe, the critical question is what was the intent of somebody who is suspected of wrongdoing. very hard to prove, often proved circumstantially by incidents or events around those, a but in this case the questions go directly to asking the president what was in his mind, and, you know, apparently in order to understand whether his intent was corrupt or not.d >> woodruff: ere were also a couple questions around the president's business dealings with russia, financial connections with russia. what would that say to you? >> potentially again, notwi k exactly, but potentially that would say to me, what was the motive here? does the president or does the campaign have a motive to curry favor with theussians. what was behind some of the actions that were taking place dyersburg t campaign or durin the last year that might explain

why the president took some ofe the steps d. >> woodruff: we're in such a realm of speculation because we don't know what's goinig on ide the mueller investigation, but if these questions were provided, you said it was unusual, but if they were provided to the psident's lawyers, could it have been part of an attempt to make the president feel more comfortabl about cooperating, sitting down for an interview? >> absoluily. is unusual. of course, the president is a highly unusual witness. ldso it wt surprise me if there was a high degree of collaboration and cooperationel between the r team and the president's lawyers to have some ground rules where t dre would beree of comfort for the presidentndo sit down a engage in this kind of conversati won. ld expect that to occur at the tail end of an investigation. remember, at some point this is going to wrap up, and at that point, the point at which you would talk eb sy like the president in these circumstances, would be as you were finishing and getting ctse to he end of the investigation. >> woodruff: we don't have a sense of where they are. >> no, but we know the mueller

investigation has a lot of information that we don't have, so that's where i think there is a high degree of sk for the president. >> woodruff: nice to have you. matthew olsen, thank you very much. >> thanks for hving >> woodruff: as we just heard, james comey is at the center of mpoany of what are ed to be robert mueller's questions for the president. i sat down with the former f.b.i. director yesterday bere their release. we aired the first part of the interview last night. tonight, we delve into the 2016 election, the investigations he led and why he went around then- attorney general loretta lynch, in announcing the end of the hillary clinton email investigation. comey has been promoting his new memoir, "a higher loyalty." you write about the encounter on former attorney general loretta lynch's plane, she had with ormer president bill clinton. if they had not had that meeting, if she had refused to see him, would your role in all this never have been? >> might have been very different. ybeah. ecause that was the capper for me, when she in the wake of all he controversy over th

meeting, she-- someone i respect and like-- but she made an announcement that was strange, w shere sd i won't recuse myself, but i'll accept jim comey's recommendation and that of the career pro that was the capper for me in deciding i have to step away to protect the integrity of the institutions. d that not happened, may we'd be in a very different place. maybe you and i would not have met todaymuch as i've enjoyed meeting you. that might have been a nice place to be. >> woodruff: in a larger sense, was there a huge disconnect between giving more attention to the clinton emails than to whether there was a trump-russia connection? >> i don't think so, because of the nature of the two investigations. the clinton email investigation was public almost from the binning. the subject of it was the secretary, the candidate herself. and we closed it publicly. the russia counterintelligence investigations had justtarted in the summer of 2016. we didn't know whether they had anything. trump was not the subject of that investigation. and so we actually never

seriously considered making a y atement, in part because what would we that point in time. we didn't know whether we had anything at all. ao ndthink the two of them are very distinct. i also understand why people ask that quesodon. >> ff: you've referred multiple times to classified information about former al ttorney generetta lynch that leaves the impression that she was compromised by her pl ersoyalty to hillary clinton. y wou say s not compromised but you can't explain why not. friends of both of you are saying that you've been very nfair to her. can you resolve this once and for all? >> i can't. a i like loretta very much and respect her. and i saw no evidence aall that she was compromised or feeding information to the clinton campaign or something like that. my worry was-- and i had to cause it was a key factor in my decision to step away from her in july and announced separately. my worry was that information was about to become public that would allow people to reasonably

question whether that was true. whether she really was acting-- >> woodruff: but wasn't that, asn't the, information known to be false? >> no. now, this is a tricky thing. the information was legitimate. now, whether what it said was true about loretta was a very different question. >> woodruff: that's hard to understand. know.h, i'm stuck, because i've gone as far as i can go in the book in describing classified material. but people have said, you know, it was forgeries, or bogus. not true. but whether the substance of the information was accurate or not, i saw no reason to believe that. av>> woodruff: so that her hanging. >> it does. and i get that. c butldn't-- and i did this in my testimony, i was asked what the reasons were you dmade yoision-- this was a significant factor. aatnd i feel badly t puts loretta in a tight spot. bt'utthe truth that it was an important factor. >> woodruff: you mentioned you might not be sitting here. do u have concerns at this pg oint in this lblic tour, with your, what is perceived as your, very tough critiques of

president trump, whether they're in the book, you've said them in interviews, sharing details of your interactions with him? all this has the effe of making it look as if the f.b.i. has it in for the presidentstf the unitees. and this is at a time when robert mueller is conducting an investigation doesn't this, in effect, undermine the credibility of the entire bureau and what the department of justice and what mr. mueller is doing? >> i don't think so for two reasons. first, my testimony, if it's ever needed, has been locked down since last summer when i testified under oath. and even before that, i wrote detailed memos, so what i have to say, unless i lose my mind and start making stuff up, has been set in concrete for many, many months. but more importantly, i would actually turn it around. the president of the united states is attacking the justice department and the f.b.i. as partisan organizations, as corrupt. and i think i have a role to play in trying to explain to the american people, that's nonsense. this organization is not politicized, it's being olitically attacked. and so i think i can do

something useful that won't have any reasonable prospect of hurting the special counsel's operation. : >> woodrut you've attacked or criticized him back. you've said he's untethered from t you've been very critical of him, not just in the book, but iy interviews. estion is the perception that the man o ran the f.b.i., was formerly the number two person in the department of jitustice, is so al of the united states, the president of the united states. how can we trust what anybody aarssociated with the dent of justice is doing? >> yeah, i would hope folks would read the book,seecause you'l yes, i'm critical of president trump. i'm also critical of myself. and i'm trying to tell the truth, and i couldn't tell the truth about what hical leadership looks like without telling the truth about donald trump being unethical. but again, the facts are sticky and stubborn things. and so i lay out the facts of my encounters with president trump in the book. i wrote t and so i do think they fairly support the characterizations that i'm offering. people can disagree, but i don't think you can walk away from

this saying either that i'm, in a partisan way, trying to attack the president, or that i somehow let the f.b.i. down. i actually see it as the reverse. >> woodruff: so in connection with all of this, you've sa that it's part of the premise of the book, you'd love to keep ps olitt of the f.b.i., and yet you're very open in saying it was the polls, that, in part, you were watching the polls, hillary clinton was so far ahead, you ended up being influenced by politics. so did you end up doing the exact thing you didn't want to do to the agency. >> i don't think so. iayn fact, what in the book is, i actually don't remember y nsciously thinking about the polls, and tried vrd to push that out of my thought process and make the decisions t regard to it. what i do in the book, maybe is a mistake in a wasngton book, but i try to be introspective and ask myself hard questions. could it have influenced me? and the answer is, of course, it could have. the whole world was assuming hillary clinton would be elected. 'tbut the bottom line doe change. i had two choices.

one was bad. one was castrophic. i could speak in october or i could conceal that something was no longer true, that i and the attorney general have said during the summer was true. i have to choose the bad option over the catastrophic. >> wood: do you think he would've done the same thing had donald trump been well ahead in the poll? >> yeah, i think so. i think so. again, because you can't choose the catastrophic option. forget the july press conference, we told the american and congress, we being the leadership of the f.b.i. and the justice department. this was done well. there's no there there. move on. and now we know that's not true in a huge way. what do you do? you can speak about that, which is a bad thing. you cchould conceal that, ws a nightmare. catastrophic. and so i think no matter where the polls stood you would still have to choose the "speak" >> woodruff: i'm asking in part because even your very good friend benjamin wittes, editing "lawfare," has written, "the tasteps ons to keep the bureau out of politics in such a situation - however sincere, however open - become politicization.

he was analyzing the decisions you made. >> ye. and that's fair, because you're stuck in the middle of an electio viciously partisan.d you've conducted a criminal investigation of one otwo candidates for president, and now that investigation is resrting. there is no good outcome. i had made the opposite choice and concealed, probably different groups of people would hate me but the storm over that would be enormous. and i knew that going in, that there was no good option for me and for the f.b.i. and in a way that's freeing, because that frees you up to tjust say, you know, what right thing to do here and make that call. >> woodruff: how do you answer the nonpartisan critics out there who say that, in trying to describe ethical leadership, which is what you say the theme of your book is, you failed yourself at your own moment of testing. that at the precise moment when you should have let the professionalso their work, let the chips fall where they may, you decided, jim comey, to step

up and take an action. in other words, you inserted yourself into the process very publicly, thus undercutting whay ou say is your is your mission, your goal. > look. people, if they read the book, can walk away with whatever gooc faith sion they want to reach. that's up to them. b iut i really do this hard to say, if you look at the facts that the f.b.i. and i-- it wonasn't just me - chose to be involved in this situation. we were stuck in the middle of a nawin situation. i hope what you see, and the reason those stories are in the book, is they illustrate the c ohallenmaking hard decisions in the middle of a partisan environment. what do you thinke bout? what ur north stars in that situatio and there, i think we thought about the right things. and it wasn't about us. itinas about us doing our jo the middle of a tremendous storm where we were screwed honestly ides? are coming from both> r , because i could still be wrong. i mean, this is an old saying, ody hates you, you must

be right. not necessarily. i could still be wrong. but it is-- to me, it's a depressing illustration of our polarization that the clinton eope think i'm on trump's side, the trump people think i'm on clinton's side. those two things cannot both be true. the truth is we're not on anybody's side. reasonable people might have made different decisions. got it. and i respect that. but it's not fair to say that we at the f.b.i. made these decisions because we are on anybody's side. >> woodruff: james comey. the book is "a higher loyalty: truth, lies, and leadership." >> thanks for having me. >> woodruff: thank you. thank you very much. >> woodruff: we turn now to the gngroup of migrants see political asylum in the u.s. this is the so-called "caravan" from central america. john yang has our update. >yang: judy, tonight, mor tnthan 100 ceral american nts remain on the u.s.

b, order in tijmexico. them celebrated when told that overnight u.s. oofficials admitted eightthem s an immigration checkpoint to apply for asylurring hopes that more will be allowed to follow. separately, the justice department charged 11 people believed to have been part of e group with entering t country illegally. for the latest, we're joined by npr's carrie kahn, who is back in mexico city after leaving tijuana last night. carrie, thanks for joining us. what's the latest on this group of people and how ma are being allowed into the united states to apply foasylum? >> as you said, there were eight last night, and at about noon ocal time in tijuana they let in about six more. so it's akl trof asylum claimants they're allowing into the port ofen try. >> yang: carrie, what are the conditions you saw at the port ofen try? >> you have 140-some from the carthan, mos, children, laying on blankets on the

concrete wi tarps. but what also happened is word dwowt out that the central americans were, there and these migrants also started showi up, and they were very upset because they had been in tijuanm e than a week waiting. they had an informal list who alwould be able tointo the u.s. facility. i said, how many people are on this list, and the n told m there were 300, twice as many of the central americans. b and theyegan starting to form tents and tarps there. so you have this huge encampment of 450 some claimants waiting to get i fo the u.s. to a political asylum. it is an incredibly dire scene at the border. one woman i spoke to, her 15-year-old daughter wased kidnay gang members and held for days and gang raped. as sn as she wasble to secure her release, she fled her home with that daughter and another dahter. another woman that i talked to, she showed me scars on her child's head that she said was beaten unconscious in

raliation for her husband's actions with gang members. it's some horrific violence that we hear acted. >> yang: and this trickle that are being allowed in to begin the process asking for asylum in the united states, what's the process they face now? >> the first point that they have to do ishey have to tell the first immigration officer that they see, they have to tell them they have a credible fear, and it's up to that officer to dechae whether he believes they have a credible fear. s. they do, then they begin the asylum proc that could be being in detention for an indeterminant amount of time, or it's up to the officers and the aministration at the time whether they want to allow them to be released. they can be releasedo famil member of a sponsor, sometimes with a monitoring apparatus around their ankle, or they'll be kept in detention throughout the entire process. that's another discretion that we'll have to see what the trump administration is doing with these arrticasylum claimants. >> yang: ofen course, pres

trump was saying no one would be allowed in. they are allowing this trickle. on the other nk they have arrested 11 and charged them ount entering the illegally. what message do you think the administration is sending? >> they have singled ou these 11, and they're definitely trying to send a message back to the caravan anmigrants tryi to cross illegally that they will be prosecuted under the full extent of the law. ya: carrie kahn of npr, thanks so much for joining us. >> you're welcome. >> woodruff: now, how educators are trying to make sure students from lower-income families are gting a college degree. as we move into graduation season, we're going to look at innotive programs helping students climb the ladder of college and economic stability. to kick it off, we look at the changing profile of many college students, and how schools may need to change their approach. hari sreenivasan is our guide fothis special series on

"rethinking college," which will be airing over the next few weeks on our weekly segment, making the grade. >> sreenivasan: at laguardia comme unity colleg new york, administrators want the first day for new students to feel like a welcome home party. >> students need tos eel like thi a home. i'm gail mellow president of the esllege. >> sreenivasan: prent gail mellow is well aware that for many students, making it from this first day to graduation is a struggle. >> tell me what you' going to study? >> sreenivasan: nationally, only 25% of new full-time community college students will earn a degree in x years. >> your entire life pivots around your ability to complete college, and more than that, so does your whole family. >> sreenivasan: mellow says the best way to educate community college students like these, is to understand who they are and where they ca from. community colleges educate the majority of the nation's low- income students.

in fact, at laguardia, 77% of stus dere come from households making less than $25,000 a year. >> often they were not well served by the urban public high schools, which are so underfunded, and so crowded. and so they come to u really, for that second chance. >> sreenivasan: 26-year-old student diamond stheback says s grateful for a second chance. >> i didn't make a lot of good cisions in life, i had to start all over, learn how to be more self-sufficient. >> sreenivasan: a single mother of two,nb sk was living in a homeless shelter just two years ago. now, earned 33 credits and is working toward an associates degree in business. >> i have to lead by example, basically. because of my kids. i can't expect them to strive to do better if i'm doing the bare henimum in my life, and collecting welfares. >> sreenivasan: gail mellow points to laguardia undergduates like diamond

stanback to bring atn to what she says is a misconception of the nation's college students. your average student, isn't whao americans think of as a college student. is there a gap here in r perception of what a college student is, and the reality of what you see everyday? >> there's such an enormous gap between who goes to college int he united states, and our very old and stereotyped image. more than half of all american college students, undergraduates, go to community colleges. more than half of those can't go full time. about a quarter of our students are working more than 30 hours a week to make ends meet. more than half of them are living at home with parents. so, the idea of college as being this time away, right after high soo it's not true. >> sreenivasan: here's diamond stanback's morning. >> i wake up around 4:30. i have to get up, shower, get

dressed before i wake up the k i'm making breakfast. at 5:30 i get isaac dressed, put on his shoes, eat, and everything. >> sreenivasan: each trip to laguardia college can take several hours. >> we walk. we get on the bus, to gto my dr'aughschool. after i drop her off, walk and i drop off isaac. then i get on a train. >> sreenivasa in fact, the complex lives of community college students like stanback are often the reason students drop out. s niretals is vice president of laguardia student affairs. >> not having food, enough money for books, those things can derail you. it really is the simple things. financial aid and pell will pay for tuition, but it is the extra the additional costs. >> sreenivasan: presides mellow ays extra costs are mostly overlooked by higher education policy makers. s co what are thesequences of this perception gap between how we think about college students, and then how we fund the education system?

>> the gap between our policies, and the reality, is enormous. what happens when we don't have a good idea of who goes to clege, and why they're going to college, is that we don't fund the things that, from mysp ptive, i wish we would fund. >> sreenivasan: to fill in the gap, laguardia's charitable foundation has raised more than $20 million for student scholarships and emergency funds. admistrators hope the money will keep more students on track. lataguardia gradun rate for full time students is 30%. stanback is enrolled in a pllrogram at laguardia chiollege discovery w assigns her an advocate to help her navigate both finances and academi. student luis ramos is enrolled in a program laguardia calls the presidential society which, in addition to supplying extra funds, teaches students soft skills. >> it amazes me all the things that i didn't know, that i needed to know, to be successful, simple things, like setting out my calendar, and scheduling everything around school.

>> sreenivasan: before enterira laguardia, s twice dropped out of four-year universities because the stress of balancing work and school became overwhelming. >> i couldn't always be like running to work, running to class, running to work again. >> sreenivasan: at laguardia, ramos gets free food from the school pantry and professional clothes. >> they just bought me a suit, which is my first suit that i've ever had. so it's good to know that when i leavgoe here, i can o a job interview, and i know, i already have exacy what i need to wear. >> sreenivasan: but perhaps one of the most crucial extras he receives is a free metrocard. ramos lives with his family in flushing, new york and takes public transportation one hour each way to csses. >> it's such a relief, if i had to pay $130 metro card every it adds up, so it makes a huge difference. >> sreenivasd then there's student christian ortiz, 22- years-old and a father. ortiz credits his second chance to a group he joined at laguardia called fatherhood academ s so a lot dents have some serious challenges, like

avyourself, aboutg to take care of a kid, having a job, how does college fit in with all that? >> priorities. it's a sacrifice thes with college. >> sreenivasan: on the day we visited fatherhood academy, sacrwas the topic of the day. >> once i make this sacrifice, eventually i know my goals, and i know my purpose. >> sacrifice comes befe >> sreenivasan: once a high school dropout, ortiz says he's now convinced he'll earn an associates deisee. how lont going to take you to finish? >> my goal is four semesters. hings happen but i'm resilient, so i'm going to get it regardless. >> sreenivasan: diamond stanback hopes to get a job in human resources. and, after graduation this june, luis ramos plans to pursue a bachelor's degree. in a recent ranking from stanford university, students like ramos, stanback, and ortiz have helped place laguardia community college 5th in the nation for moving low-income families into the middle class. for the pbs newshour, i'm hari sreenivasan. >

odruff: last week, investigators in california arrested a man they believe is the golden state killer, a serial murderer and rapist whose crimes terrorized the state in the 1970s and '80s.a s william brangham reports, the arrestug is considered a success for law enforcement, but it also raises questions about the unique method used to find the spect. >> brangham: this is the man accedf being the golden state killer: 72-year-old former fficer joseph deangelo, as he appeared in a sacramento court last friday. >> do you have a lawyer mr. >> brangham: the golden state killer has been linked to at least 12 murders, 50 rapes and a string of burglaries throughout california. variously known as the east area rapist and the original night stalker, these were brutal, meticulously planned crimes that

spanned numerous california counties between 1976 and 1986. >> police say lock up tick, nto's east area rapist may still be in town. >> brangham: as the crimes escalated, and police couldn't find a suspect, californians grew increasingly terrified. investigator paul holes, who tracked the golden state killer for decades, described the relief many felt with this arrest. >> right now the biggestth rewas i have gotten is i called the handful of victims that i've had someelationship with. very rewarding to at least hear the relief in their voices that they can now relax in a way that this guy is behind bars. he is never getting out. i think some of them thought he was going to come back and get me so they lived in that fear. el brangham: deangelos arrest has been cause forration, but it's also raising questions over how he was located and whether law enforcement has

oped a pandora's box with n d.n.a. technology. investigators took spn.a. of the ted killer from an old crime scene and uploaded it to a public geneology database called g.e.d. match, the kind that pe use to track down distant relatives or trace their ancestry. on that site, investigators were able find what seemed to be a distant relative of the suspected killer-- a great, great, great grandparent from the 1800s. then, investigators followed the dozens of family trees branching off this one grandparent, and using census data, old newspapers and death records, were able to home in on two men who were in california at the time of the attacks. a final d.n.a. test, done a discarded piece of trash, confirmed that the second man, joseph deangelo, was the suspect. sacramento county district ttorney anne marie schubert cheered the technique used to .aentify the suspect.

>> we knew the d.n. would be-- would always be the answer. >> brangham: deangelo returns to court on may 14th. he has yet to enter a plea. for more on how the golden state suspect was apprehended, i'm joineand now by the who'll prosecute him: anne marie schubert is the district attorney for sacramento county. welcome to the newshour. >> thank you for having me. appreciate it. >> brangham: so this isor obviously an eus moment for california and sacramento in particular. i wonder if youould take us back for people who didn't live through it or weren't in california athe time, just what it was like in the late '70s and early f80sr people living with these constant fear of these crimes going on. >> sure. i think it's almost diffict to explain to folks what it was like. i mean, i know it because i greu here at the time and i was 12 when it first started to happen. and for really anybody that lived in sacramento at the time, it was... it changed us. it changed our community. it went from a very i would say

innocent town where people left their doors unlocked, they leftr tindows open, they knew nothing about self-defense, to a time when it happened so often and it was so much o the news that it wasn't a matter of if it was going to happen again, it was a matt of when. and so it really terrorized this community. t's almost difficult to explain. it's almost like living through es earthquake and trying to explain that pr of what it's like to go through that. but it really did change thi ommunity in many, many ways. >> brangham: obviously you used a very uneue techni to finally identify him. i explained how you went aboutor this band. but can you tell us more about how did you come up with this idea, how did y execute this? >> well, i don't want to take credit for the idea. there was a team ofolks that worked on it. so my credit i guess is just kind ofaking sure that we have a team approach going into this. but, you know, it was essentially using innovative

technology. i think everybody knows now that it was using some genealogy sites and using the d.n.a. to the best ofur ability. and as i said, a group of folks building the t tes is genealogy, which was very, very labor intensive, very, very long process, but ultimately it led to mr. deangelo. >> brangham: obviously everyone in california seems very grad if he is i fact the killer to have this man in custody, but some have raisedaw concerns thatnforcement dipping into these big d.n.a. databases is some form of overreach. i wonder, what do you say to that concern? >> well, i think whatmp's tant for people to remember is that this is and has been e f the most significant unsolveds erial rape/murder cases of all time here in california. and the lvel of violent crime, the number of crimes, you know, i understand there's a conversatn folks want to have

about privacy and things like that, but there is a balance nhere, there's what i would call the public safety balance. i'm sure that this process will play out not only inublic debate and also in a courtroom, and ultimately we're confident that at the end o the day, when the sample was collected from as i call it a disecarded sam that then matches mr. deangelo, that we're going to prevail. >> brangham: obviously agin, in this case it proved incredibly useful and it seems to have pulled a very dangerous man into police custody, but do you understand those concerns that people raise, that perhaps when i give my d.n.a. o to onef these web sites, i don't really ever expect it to be part of a police investigation that may not occur for years down the line, and you understand the concern that people raise that, i don't want my d.n.a. in a drag nut somewhere down the road. >> i understa the conversation. i actually do.

i also understand what, you know, the company ged match put out after this occurs, that folks that put their informatio in there were on notice. i understand that. again, i will say that this particur situation was not matter of solving a car theft or a burglary. ts was a magnitude of this case was extraordinary. and law enforcement did what they feltas necessary to ultimately, and it did, in fact, lead us to thenclusion. >> brangham: one question about the specifics of this case. when people upload their d.n.a. to these sites, usually you're uploading your own d.n.a. or the d.n.a. for someone you are the guardian for that. was not the case in this case. are you concerned at all about the legality of the evidence in this particular instance? >> i well, quite confident this will play out in a courtroom, and everything that was done was put into an opens ource site.

ged match. i understand the public conversation, but i'm confidenti th going to play out in a courtroom. >> brangham: lastly before you, d like to shift to another case. there is still a great deal of concern and outrage in sacramento about the shooting death of st tphon clark byo police officers. a lot of people in the community have been argue thank you need to act quicker to prosecute the police offirs for that shooting. can you tell us where that stands? why hasn't that happened yesterday >> well the short answer is that we have not received any case from law forcement yet to review on that. as i've said many, many time, these cases take... when it does get received in our offi will take a period of time. my job as the district attorney is to do a full, fair, and independent review. so one, we don't have the case, and, two, when we do have the case, along with the torn general, i'm quite confident we're going to do that. but i understand people's frustration, but i was elected to do a job, an i intend to do

that. >> brangham: all right, anne marie schubert, district attorney for sacramento county. thank you very much. >> you're welcome. thank you very much. >> woodruff: from the firing of a secretary of state to possible talks between the president and north korea's dictator, the last year in americanhaoreign policy been momentous and chaotic. in his new book, "war on peace: the end of diplomacynd the decline of american influence," the journali ronan farrow, who worked in the obama state department, argues that this is part of a much bigger and darker trend. i recently spoke with farrow, and began by asking him if he dially thought we were watching the end of americaomacy. >> you know, i think we're at an infection point, judy, where we can make important choices about that. this is in the news right now. mike pompeo wilbe coming in. iwill the will be on his should

ers. he has a track record as hawk, a track record for saber haggling n large-scale diplomatic deals like the iran deal. iet the whistle blowers who share their st in this book are hopeful that he may pull out of the nose dave at is right now triggering a transformation of america's place in the worldt where we are g our ability to negotiate and make peace and incasingly shooting first and asking questions later. hingsodruff: one of the you start the book writing about is the so-called "mahogany massacre," where people who played key long-time roles in the state department were just summarily dismissed, a lot of them in the very early weeks of the trump administrauetion. i the pushback on that is doesn't every new president, every new secretary of state have a right to come in and put their own people in? >> absolutely, and this was done in a very different way from that normal scenario you just described where non-political

appointees, career officials who had decades of expertise in important subject matter areaso relatedr most important challenges around the world were just shown the door. and, you know, what meistle-blower after whistle-blower tols they feel there is a culture of denigrating expertise. and as we barrel into, for instance, the north korea crisis and this latest effort to tackle it, the experts who have been embedded in that crisis for decades sme will tell what a meeting between leaders in that situatio will achieve o not. we could get played. what we do know is we need it t bbedded in strategy, built by diplomats, and we don't have them anymore. >> woodruff: welk you among other things were one of thefe verpeople to get access to sit down with former secretary of state rex tillerson. e told you in that conversation, he admitted some mistakes were made. what did he say to you? >> you know, every living o secretastate went on the record for war on peace, and i think they were each candid ind

ferent and surprising ways. tex tillerson to his great credit gave a l of access, and for the first time in this interview really did say, look, maybe it was just too inexperienced. hsaid when hefended these very deep cuts to the state department budget, he was in the early days of the job, and that over time he learned a little bit more, but at that point he didn't understand that running a government agency, you're supposed to advocate for more money, not push back on congress's efforts to fund you. i will say other secretaries egarded that posture with some degree of astonisent, but he was at the very least frank and he put a lot of blame on this whiteouse, judy. >> woodruff: well, and of course, ronan farrow, the other part of that argument is you're saying that put too much emphasis on defense, on military spending. iseir argument, of course, is that ollows years of cutting the defense budget, not spending enough, letting the pentagon grow weak. you now have the defense secretary james mattis saying

this sizeable increase is what we must have. it's what we need to get us back to a position of primacy. so they have pushback. >> i'm very forthright about saying, look, this trend is not linear. there are ups and downs, something like sequestration led to cuts across the board, but what we see is that at the times when we gut the state depament spending, it has devastating consequences. this happens under administrations in both parties. you look back at the clinton administration andhe early ays after the cold war where the mantra was, it's the economy, stupid, we did similarly deep cutting to the state department, and it resulted in the closure of twont governgencies on important priorities. it resulted in the closure ofun embassies athe world, and it resulted in a scenario where after 9/11 we didn't have theip dmatic capacity we needed. and we're seeing history repeat itself in that respect. right now it's a much more extreme version of that, and i would also point out that mattis has been one of the first to say, if you don't spend on diplomats, i'm going to need to get more bullets.

>> woodruff: you mentioned north korea a minute ago. as you katw, people areing that effort to make a difference, get the north to denuclearize. president trump initiated that. isn't it possible tha as a result of what the president has done there could be a good result on the korean peninsula? and, in fact, the president is still talking to world leaders, you know, you mentioned the french leader, mr. macron was in washington. so it's not as if diplomacy has stopped. is it? >> it ishe absolutelyase that this curveball of a eting couldeader have successful results, but i think what everyone who has ever been involved in north korea diplomacy agrees on is this is oilne of the most diplomatic opponents in the world. they lie a great deal.mi the ps they're making now they have made before and backed down on. aneryou run a real risk with this kind of a meeting that you'll just legitimize them as a nuclear power.

>> woodruff: you ar relatively new. relatively young at all.i thiink i read you're 30 years old. you worked at the state department from a very early age. there are those who are saying,u wait a , it's going to take time, some of these things just don't happen overnight. so isn't it... i guess the argument is, don't we all need to take a breath, see what happens? >> so we talk atth le in "war on peace" about the response ofo world leaders all this saber rattedling from trump about north korea. and across the board for the most part ita a amount of despair. you know, and the same is true, course, with respect to the iran deal. there is great concern about the possibility of the unitd states abdicating its will leadership in some of our great diplomatic confrontations. you see an example of macron coming in and sayingall right, let's look at an alternative deal to salvage some of the accomplishments. that's absoluly a productive

conversation to be having, but this is not the way that diplomacy has to work. it doesn't have to be leadership by tweet, and i think that what you hear from a lot of the hguished voices in this book, including richardolbrooke, my mentor of many years, in his final days before his death is the system doesn'tave to be that way and we lose a lot when we sacrifice our diplomacy andpe thle who do it. >> woodruff: ronan farrow, thank you. the book is "war on peace: the end of diplomacy ad the decline of american influence". >> thank you, judy. >> woodruf later this evening on pbs, "frontline" presents an investigation with npr into the federal response to puerto rico following hurricane maria. it delves into the island's complicated relationship with the mainland u.s., its financial struggles and the reasons why seven months later, more than 1ll00,000 residents are s without power."b

ckout in puerto rico" airs tonight on most pbs stations. and t tonight.newshour for i'm judy woodruff. join us online and again here tomorrow evening. for alle of us at s newshour, thank you and see you soon. >> major funding for the pbs nhaewshoubeen provided by: >> babbel. a language app that teaches real-life conversations ge a new langua. >> the ford foundation. king with visionaries on frontlines of social change worldwide.

>> carnegie corporaf new york. supporting innovations in education, democratic engagement, and the advancement of international peace and security. at carnegie.org. >> 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. captioning sponsored by cnewshour productions, captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

wes: we're the history detectives and we're going to investigate thfruntold stories america's past. gwen: in this episode ry we uncover a stof political intrigue and presidential power concealed in this firehouse logbook. why in the world would ulysses s. grant be here instead of washington or even phadelphia, where the centennial exposition was? elsie: we use foranalysis to discover the amazing history hind this exquisite little face. i mean, we need to figure out, is this a person? is this an effigy? is it an amulet? and most importantly, i how in the world didt get here to the mantoloking beach? tukufu: and we delve into atlantic city's mur past to find out if this baseball field is evidence of corruption