hello, everyone, and welcome to "amanpour & co." here's what's coming up. the disappearance of saudi journalist jamal khashoggi puts the spotlight on reporters who put their lives on the line. celebrated correspondent marie calvin gave hers in syria. and now the hollywood actress rosamund pike plays her in a new film and joins us along with marie's friend and fellow journalist lindsey hilsum who has written a new biography about marie colvin's remarkable life. then, is u.s. democracy under assault ahead of the mid-term elections? i speak to carol anderson about her work exposing voter suppression. plus, imagine being able to edit our dna.

biochemist general jennifer doudna tells our walter isaacson about some extraordinary new technology. uniworld is a proud sponsor of "amanpour & co." when bea tollman founded a collection of boutique hotels, she had bigger dreams, and those dreams were on the water -- a river, specifically -- multiple rivers that would one day be home to uniworld river cruises and their floating boutique hotels. today that dream sets sail in europe, asia, india, egypt, and more. bookings available through your travel agent. for more information, visit uniworld.com. >> additional support has been provided by rosalind p. walter. bernard and irene schwartz. sue and edgar wachenheim iii. the cheryl and philip milstein family. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you.

thank you. welcome to the program. i'm christiane amanpour. the u.s. secretary of state is if riyadh today, and he's met with the saudi king and also with the saudi crown mince mohammed bin salman. he has briefed president trump a day after sources say the kingdom is preparing to admit t there is no sign of any th was public explanation yet, no matter how incredulous. and a growing number of sources are telling us that they consider it highly likely that khashoggi was assassinated under high-level orders. one source tells us that he even alerted two western governments about this two days after khashoggi went missing. saudi arabia, of course, continues to vehemently deny this. meantime, the turkish president today says his investigators found parts of the saudi consulate in istanbul were, quote, painted over and the saudi consul general has now reportedly left the country.

that consulate is where khashoggi was last seen two weeks ago. nic robertson joins us for the latest in the investigation from istanbul. nic, thanks for being there on the latest as you know it. and first to the issue of this alleged mea culpa or explanation from saudi arabia. nothing yet? >> reporter: no, nothing yet. i think perhaps part of the way to understand that is saudi arabia is ruled essentially by crown prince mohammed bin salman. so if he doesn't want to do something, it doesn't happen. there were hints we had over the weekend that he was -- or there was about to be this idea of some ultimate statement, some different facts, this idea that rogue elements perhaps had been involved in khashoggi's death or disappearance, that this was somehow, you know, that the government didn't know about it somehow.

this floated again sunday evening and, again, nothing came from that. when i look at it and look at secretary of state mike pompeo's visit today, he spent about ten minutes with the king, the real ruler in the country, and much longer with the crown prince. the crown prince runs the country right now. the king does not. everything we understand about the crown prince if he doesn't want to do something, he doesn't do it. he has a lot of advisers around him, but very few of his inner circle would dare stand up and tell him, yes or no, they would wait for him to make a decision. >> so, nic, let's first get to the actual hard evidence the turkish president himself spoke publicly about today, that consulate where you've been waiting and watching and reporting for the better part of the last two weeks has finally been entered by turkish investigators. as far as you know, what have they found?

>> reporter: nine hours they spent in there overnight last night. forensics teams as well. one of our cameramen could see blue and purple lights flashing in the upstairs window. we understand the forensics investigators had the technology to see if there was dna in a room, that they knew where they wanted to go in the building. they knew, they said, that khashoggi had been murdered and precisely where they wanted to go and what they wanted to do. rubble and bricks were removed overnight in a couple of trucks as well and in the last hour or so investigators have arrived at the consul general's house for what would be a search of the consul general's house and some of the vehicles there because, of course, some of those vehicles were those seen on closed circuit television, the moments when jamal khashoggi disappeared and when turkish authorities suspect something nefarious happened with him and those vehicles moved off to the consul general's house.

>> so, nic, the turkish authorities have been very leaky and stuck with the same story. it hasn't really diverged and now more sources are beginning to say there's no way this could have been a botched operation, they point to all those 15 saudis who arrived there the day jamal went to the consulate. they point to some of the personnel who came. they have identified some of them as the crown prince's bodyguard, talked about a forensic expert, about a bone sore. does it sound from your sources that the turks believe this idea of a botched interrogation? could it be likely or they're trying to find a face-saving way out of this? >> reporter: you know, i think they're trying to play this in as much as they would like to pressure saudi officials behind the scenes. i've been told they've been

asked is there anything you would like to tell us? when the saudi officials name the 15 names. the video of these men arriving from saudi arabia by these private jets. i don't think for one second that turkish authorities are fooled by this apparent statement that might come from saudi officials, that it doesn't stand the sniff test. those private jets flying from riya riyadh. we know the routes they took. they would have had to go through air traffic control. they couldn't have gotten here without being sanctioned. at what point did this go terribly wrong if that's the account that goes forward, and why haven't they spoken up about this botched operation if that's what they're going to do? so it just doesn't pass the sniff test. what the foreign minister said today it is absolutely critical,

absolutely critical were his words, there is transparency from the saudis. the moment it was announced the turkish investigators would get in the consul yesterday, minutes later, a cleaning crew went in. the turkish president, as we've discussed here, talked about toxic chemicals and things being removed and things painted over. that doesn't speak to transparency. the consul general leaving the country minutes before investigators arrive late they are afternoon to search his premises and to search his vehicles doesn't speak to transparency. i don't think the turkish authorities here are trusting one little bit of saudi officials. they see a longer term relationship in this region with saudi arabia. they perhaps don't get along with the current leadership but they're trying to have that relationship be enduring and lasting despite what seems to be clear tensions behind the scenes and an apparent complete lack of trust. >> yes, and threading that needle, as you just said, the united states also is looking to

its geopolitical relations and figuring out how to best deal with this. of course, this is not a story that will go away, and we'll continue to cover it. nic, thank you very much. we'll have more on the mounting and severe dangers to journalists today in a moment when movie star rosamund pike and correspondent lindsey hilsum join us to talk about their new work on the american war reporter marie colvin who was killed in syria. but first, another threat to the bedrock of democracy when voters across the united states cast their ballots in midterms exactly three weeks from today the world will be watching to see who reaps the costs and benefits of the trump presidency. in the final stretch election observers are raising red flags warning many american citizens may not be able to cast a ballot at all. it's called voter suppression, when the rules bam a partisan

tactic to weigh down the opposition. my guest's new book lays out a threat to the u.s. and its elections. it's called "one person, no vote -- how voter suppression is destroying our democracy. professor carol anderson is the author, and she says the 21st century is littered with the bodies of black votes and she is joining me now from atlanta. professor anderson, welcome to the program. >> thank you so much for having me. >> so first and foremost, did i describe voter suppression actually correctly? what is it? give us the full definition of what it means. >> voter suppression -- and, yes, you did lay it out beautifully. it's using the laws and the tactics to, in fact, target key populations of voters and block their access to the voting booth. >> and i guess there are many ways of doing it. i'll get into that in a second. you have talked about being littered with the bodies of

black votes. it obviously has a particular direction as far as you've studied. and you are talking about georgia because it's one of the most in the spotlight. tell me what you mean by that provocative sentence. >> what i mean by that, when you're looking around from many of these voter suppression states, and these are the states where you have generally a republican governor and a republican state legislature, they've crafted the laws particularly after obama's election and after gutting the voting rights act, that what that has done it has allowed them to craft a whole series of laws under the guise of protecting the integrity of democracy, under the guise of protecting the voting booth that, in fact, target african-americans. they target the poor. they target latinos.

they particularly target youth, students, and those are the groups that voted overwhelmingly for democrats and voted overwhelmingly for barack obama. those are the groups that are being targeted because those are the groups that don't vote en masse for republicans. >> okay, so let's just take this step-by-step. first and foremost last week the associated press reported some 53,000 people in georgia, nearly 70% of them black, according to the ap, have had their voter registrations placed in limbo because of some kind of mismatch. in this case potentially with a driver's license or social security information. >> yes. >> the state, on the other hand, has assured them that they will not be penalized. they will be allowed to vote. tell me about that. why will they not be allowed to vote if the state says they can?

>> and so what happens that begins to create a kind of confusion. it's the same way voter i.d. creates confusion. will my i.d. work or won't it work when i go to the voting booth? will i be turned away? by creating a sense of confusion instead of certainty about your basic right to vote, it depresses the voter turnout, and so people begin to hear that they're on the pending list, their voter registration didn't go all the way through and they're going to have to bring some type of i.d. but what kind of i.d. to be able to vote. and will the poll workers be educated enough to know that although i'm on the pending list my i.d. will work? and by creating these levels of confusion, by creating these kinds of obstacles, what they do is systematically depress the voter turnout, and the mismatch are simple things like a hyphen not being there or an accent mark over your name, renee, on your voter registration card but not on your driver's license.

>> right. so, professor anderson, you teach at emory university. you're watching this very closely and, of course, both candidates for governor, democrat and republican, are obviously heavily weighed into this. let me start by putting forth what the democratic candidate said this weekend. a little bit about, you know, what you were just saying and one of the 153,000 reported to have their registrations put in limbo. >> the professor who was covered by the ap story, this is a college professor who has a hyphen in her last name. because the hyphen was left out either by someone typing in the information at the department of motor vehicles or in the registrar's office, she was removed from the rolls despite being someone who actively votes. that minor error can turn into a major problem. because she is a college professor, she knows what to go through to find out a solution. what about those in the tiny

communities stepping up and saying this is my turn to cast my ballot only to find they are disenfranchised, they don't know that they can go to the polls. they get a confusing letter saying there's something wrong with their registration and more than likely will sit out this election. the fear that is created is as much about terrifying people to vote as it is blocking their ability to do so. >> so i just wanted your comment on that because she's expanding on what you were telling us, but on the other hand, the other side says, well, hang on a second. for voting we have to have rock solid i.d. and this guarantees the security of our elections and our voting process. what do you say to that? >> i say that that is based on the myth or basically the lie of voter fraud and it is a lie. what you hear brian kemp, who is

our secretary of state and is also the republican candidate for governor saying is that we have rampant voter fraud and we need i.d.s in order to protect the integrity of the ballot box. but a professor out of california in a study from 2000 to 2014, he found that out of 1 billion votes in the united states there were only 31 cases of voter impersonation fraud, the kind of fraud voter i.d. will stop. so 31 cases over 15 years. we're talking about two cases a year out of 1 billion votes. >> okay. >> so this is the fraud. the voter fraud lie that says we need to have these i.d.s. >> i'm not trying to interrupt you. you're explaining that really well but i want to go to brian kemp, who as you mentioned, is the republican candidate for governor. he also happens right now to be georgia's secretary of state and, as such, administers elections.

this is what he said to fox news -- listen and we'll talk about it. >> your opponent says you're trying to suppress the vote by holding up thousands of voter registration applications. what do you say to that? >> oh, that's a smokescreen trying to hide her radical views. those folks that are on the pending list, all they have to do is go to the polls, show their photo i.d. and they can vote. again, this is just a distraction from her view, of her group filing a lawsuit to get citizens to vote. we're not going to allow that. we'll have secure and fair elections in our state. >> so i see you vigorously shaking your head, professor anderson. >> well, yes. you hear -- so how did we move from georgians, how did we move from african-americans being 70% of those who are on the pending list?

how did we move from that to having, you know, this is all of these noncitizens. this is the secretary of state out of kansas who was also on -- headed up trump's election integrity commission. this is the same lie. it's a xenophobic fear, they're coming to take over american democracy. but they cannot point, again, like voter fraud, they cannot point to the kind of massive immigrant takeover. it's simply not there. so this is that red herring. this is the smokescreen that's hiding the fact that we have had since 2016 -- from 2016 to 2018 -- 10.6% of georgia voters have been purged from the voter rolls. 10.6% in two years. >> and so tell me -- sorry. tell me what kind of a difference that would make in

georgia, that 10.6%. >> oh, it would make a world of difference because overwhelmingly the people who are being purged are not white and whites make up the majority of the republican party. so if what you do you purge those who are african-american, who are latino, who are asian americans, then what you do is you skew the electorate. and this is going to be a close race. stacey abrams and bill kent are within a statistical margin of error in the polls. voter turnout will be key. if you cause confusion in the ranks of those who are likely to vote democratic, then what you have done you have skewed the election. you have stolen the election. >> let me ask you, professor, because we're talking about the studies you've done and in your

state, the democrats are saying this is what the republicans are doing. but in many states, democrats are in charge. are there cases of this happening in those states? >> what you see happening in states where the democrats are in charge, you will have gerrymandering in some of those states like in maryland, which is also a way of voter suppression, but you don't get the purges. you don't get the voter i.d.s. you see that happening overwhelmingly in states that have been previously under the voting rights act, jurisdiction of the department of justice, that the supreme court gutted. after that you saw a massive wave of purges in those states. so much so they've estimated that an additional 2 million people have been purged that would not have been purged had the department of justice and had the voting rights act been in place.

what we're seeing is depression. >> the decline of black voters in 2016 is the campaign's most misunderstood story, i guess because of what you're talking about now, but what do you predict then for the elections of 2018, the current midterms? >> what i'm predicting is now people are on high alert, and what i saw, for instance, in alabama in that race in 2017 where doug jones won in a stunning upset victory was that civil society came out and helped overcome all of the voter suppression techniques alabama had put on its black population. in terms of voter i.d., closing polls, in terms of purges, in terms of not enough machines in minority neighborhoods, in terms of felony disenfranchisement,

civil society did that heavy, heavy lifting and the black voter turnout in alabama was 45% which was five percentage points higher than it was in the state overall. >> it's really fascinating. >> that's what i see happening here. >> all right. everybody will be watching because these are some of the most highly anticipated elections that i can remember. professor anderson, thank you. now the right to vote is essential to democracy and, of course, so, too, is a free press at a time when journalists are in particular danger, jamal khashoggi being exhibit a right now, we bring you the story of marie colvin, a journalist killed while telling the world about the war in syria. she did cheat death many times even losing an eye while she was covering the war in sri lanka. but marie, in the words of her editor at the "london sunday times," had a god given talent to make people care. two new and very timely works focus on her work and her life. the movie "a private war,"

starring rosamund pike who uncannily and completely inhabits our colleague marie and marie's friend, the tv correspondent lindsey hilsum, has written the book called "in extremis" from when she was 13 all the way up to her death. both of them talk about marie, jamal, the astonishing power of their work and the heavy price both have paid. rosamund pike, lindsay hilsum, welcome to the program. >> thank you. >> i don't know whether you think about this in real time but it could not be better time, this movie and, frankly, your book as well since it does highlight marie's life but in the context of the severe danger we journalists are under and people like marie obviously was. what do you think about what's going on right now with the horrific story of jamal khashoggi?

>> i think matthew heineman, the director, and i are proud that this is a film that celebrates journalism, that is a hymn to the danger journalists put themselves in. i'm not sure everybody is fully are of that. it struck me actually reading lindsey's book that in and around 2004-2005, "the sunday times" was quickly having to recalibrate and start almost started reading books on the effects of repeated exposure to conflict. >> ptsd. >> and now we have it from "the washington post" this time of a journalist again who has lost his life in pursuit of his truth or for speaking out his truth. >> you are a foreign correspondent and a war correspondent and you've written the book on marie "in extremis" and had amazing access to her diaries. you also know that rosamund has learned to know by playing this singular character.

>> i think the extraordinary thing about marie, people say marie was fearless. she wasn't really fearless, but she could always overcome her fear because she was so motivated. she was so highly motivated to tell the story of victims of war and there was nothing more than marie liked more than sitting in a trench with a bunch of soldiers and finding out what was going on. she did think about her own safety but, you know, i often worked alongside marie. her danger threshold was far beyond mine. she always went in further and stayed longer. that was why she got the best stories. that was why she's not with us today. >> what did you think as you were assimilating the character to play her? what lindsey says is really true. it's what jamal did, speak out against his government. marie and other journalists were in syria saying things that were seen by the assad regime in real time, particularly since she

gave interviews to cable news and radio and all the rest of it. how did you compute for yourself of an outsider to news but as the actress playing this very brave, kind of edgy frontiers woman? >> i love the way you say that. marie had extraordinary empathy and what interested her was the human cost of war, and i think in terms of our film it's very interesting because the depiction of middle eastern people in hollywood movies tends to be as the outsider, the other, sometimes the extremist, the fanatic, that's the sort of traditional role. and here is a movie that goes into and delves into the pain of the people in these conflict regions. particularly the syrian people, libyan people, people in iraq. and that's not a portrait many people in the west are often given on film. i think marie would have

applauded, too. >> we're going to start with one of the clips now because it is when she's actually meeting photographer paul conroy for the first time who was with her to the end in syria, this is in iraq and she's doing her typical thing, wanting to meet up and collaborate with the best of the best. let us play this and we'll talk about it. >> what's your name? >> paul. >> i'm marie. >> i know. >> so you freelance? >> always. >> any good? >> the best. >> paul, the photographer, i think also worked with you on the script and as a consultant and all the rest of it. what did you gain from meeting the people she not just knew but worked in the field with? plus, how did you get that uncannily accurate depiction of her? >> that's very nice. i knew that in playing her i had to inhabit her.

it wasn't just -- i couldn't just play a war photographer. i knew that probably in an ideal world he would be making a documentary about marie which sadly he can't, and i knew i had to deliver something that would be as close to the authentic as i could. so i knew that involved changing the way i walked, changing the way i spoke, changing the way i learned to smoke. >> which she did a lot. >> did you drink martinis as well? >> i learned to mix and drink, all of the above. and paul connery came with us i think just to check out what we were doing for about a week and get us up on our feet. i think he found in our profession something akin to the sort of sense of a traveling band on the road with people where there's a sort of urgent sense of intimacy because you're having to create something that delves deep into the human condition in the short space of time and it's that fast track

intimacy i'm sure people in your profession find as well and i think he enjoyed it and he stayed with us and actually became our on set film photographer, a bit of a relief. it was valuable to have him around because he shared -- he gave a real sense at all times of marie and paul's camaraderie, of her, of the moments she would go dead quiet because she experienced the fear lindsey was talking about and i agree with you definitely not fearless, the real courage is feeling it and going there anyway. >> quick, quick, you've seen a clip or two, how does rosamund match up to marie? >> the first time i saw it, it was quite painful because the thing rosamund has done, which is so weird to me, she has the way marie moved, the sort of spiky, angular thing. it really did feel like marie was there, and it was that more than anything else. the face, the eye patch, the voice -- but it was the way she moved, and that's what was so

extraordinary to me. >> given where we are in the story, you worked alongside her many times, i did as well, and you have had unbelievable access to her most intimate thoughts through her diary since she was 13 years old. as we move along with this story, give us a little idea of who she was and how she became this person. >> it's so extraordinary. for me i think in writing the biography one of the most extraordinary moments is when i found this diary of hers, a little white, plastic closed with a key and i had to slit it open and i realized, oh, my god, nobody has opened this since marie at the age of 14 locked it. but then, oh, she was naughty. oh, she was rebellious. and so she's brought up on long island, middle class family, catholic family, mass every sunday.

i think one of my favorite entries, it just goes, to church. the mother and the father no like. i felt in that rebellious little girl i saw the woman she became who i knew. >> i want to fast forward to a dramatic -- to the end of her life and i want to play one of the very last dispatches she gave from homs which was to anderson cooper, and it became really sort of seminal. let's just play it. >> it's a complete and utter lie that they are only going after terrorists. there are rockets, tank shells, antiaircraft being fired in a parallel line into the city. the syrian army is shelling the city of cold, starving civilians. >> she was in one of the suburbs, outposts of homs, and insisted on staying. that's part of the whole controversy between her and paul and the editors and people who look at what happened to her in the end.

it's a pivotal moment in the film. what was going through your mind? you're playing her. you've assimilated so much. and yet, you know, some people might say that determination to stay is what cost her her life. >> it's so funny, my heart is racing -- i haven't been nervous sitting here, and then we play that and somewhere in my body i go back to the feelings that i inhabited playing marie at that time in her life. and actually she was in homs. they understood the big assault was coming and they were halfway down this storm drain, this four kilometer storm drain, which was the entry and exit point for any journalist coming in to homs taken by the fighters, and she was sort of halfway down or a few hundred meters down it and she said, i've got to go back. there are 28,000 people there and i can't abandon them. and paul said to her, you

realize if we go back, we will die. and she said, i have to go back this is what we do. this is what we do. and she went back and he, of course, followed her because he wasn't going to leave her. and he told me, actually, that they -- i find this very emotional, so forgive me, but he said that they both felt very strongly they may not make the deadline for "the sunday time" that week and that motivated her decision to ask shawn ryan if she could broadcast with cnn and channel 4 and wherever, the bbc. >> and she -- >> she called me, and i said -- and i was furious with her. marie, why did you go back? lindsey, it's the worst thing we've ever seen. i said, i know, but, you know, what's your exit strategy? and she said, that's just it. we don't have one. i'm working on it now. and then a few hours later, she was killed. >> again, in this moment that we are living, we all remember so starkly where we were when we heard that marie had been killed

in 2012. and now, six years later, you have so many others have been killed in the last six years trying to do this kind of work, but all of a sudden the world is focused on jamal khashoggi. because he wasn't a war correspondent but he was taking on and criticizing a very powerful regime and, again, until we find out exactly what happened to him, we can only assume the worst of what's been leaked. but there is that whole similar attitude that i cannot be silenced, i will not be silenced, whether it's marie because of the danger, whether it's jamal because of the threats he was getting from the saudi regime and others. i wonder whether people understand that's what we do for them. >> but i think the other thing that's really important, you know, marie was killed in syria but the majority of journalists killed in syria are syrians.

and i think that is so important that the majority of journalists under threat all over the world are under threat from their own governments and from organized criminals. today is the anniversary of the killing of daphne caruana galizia, a maltese journalist investigating corruption. and she and two other journalists within the european union have been killed this year, and they are -- they're not in war zones. they're investigating corruption and organized crime. and that, it seems to me, is really important -- i don't know if it's new but it's a front in this war on journalists. >> i think that's why this film and your book at this time are really significant and major reminders of what's at stake here not just for the individuals who are targeted and lose their lives but for our very democracies, for the whole idea of what's truth and what's lies and, again, about marie, we had her sister and her lawyer on, cat and her lawyer, who are convinced this was not an accident, that she was not killed in any crossfire, that she was, in fact, targeted.

i interviewed them when they came out with their conclusions and their suit against the assad regime and cat explained to me she had been talking to paul conroy. let's just listen to this. >> really it felt like from the beginning it had to be deliberate. the coincidence of her reporting out of homs the night before she was killed was too much of a coincidence but it really hit home when i spoke to paul conroy about his knowledge of the artillery fire and how he was absolutely certain that the pattern of fire was one of targeting not random bombings as they had experienced in the weeks leading up to marie's murder. so i really felt from the outset that it was deliberate. >> and we say that in the film. as we leave the media center in homs under fire in the final moments of the film, the paul character played by jamie dornan, says to me, they're bracketing. they found us.

and marie says, what's that? they're measuring the distance and they're closing in on our location. they know exactly where we are. >> and in the last chapter of the book i talk about the other evidence of the defectors and spies. there's quite a lot of evidence. >> you think this is a solid case? >> someone who has spoken out -- >> an intelligence official. >> there's a lot of evidence. >> so the next question is, much with the saudi regime right now, do you think that either marie's death or jamal's death will result in the guilty being held accountable? >> oh, i wish i could say yes. i think i believe that in the end the guilty will be held accountable. but i don't know how far away the end is because right now i feel journalists are really under threat, and i think if it is established jamal khashoggi was murdered, if it is established that he was murdered for being a journalist and

speaking out, then i really hope governments and people within saudi arabia do react and do something. >> and can we just point out that six years after marie's death, and she was reporting from the very beginning of the war, it looks like assad is on the verge of not just winning but being accepted as the winner. and we need to really compute this. we really do need to just think about it for the moment because it cost 500,000 lives at the very least of syrians and millions of refugees and obviously so many more wounded. but i want to play, because this film is called "a private war," so it's not just about marie's war work, it's also about her internal war with herself. and she had, as you know and we know, a lot of ptsd. she was a heavy drinker. she had a couple of miscarriages. she had failed marriages. she had suicide. she had divorce. she had just so much going on in her own life.

she was, nonetheless, conducting this work at a very high level. and i just want to play marie accepting an award back in 2000, then marie talking to paul in the film when she's actually at one of the rehabilitation clinics. >> the pain of war is really beyond telling. i don't think i've ever filed a story and felt, i got it, that i really said what i want people to feel. but i do try. and i think whatever the rights and wrongs of a conflict, i feel we fail if we don't face what war does, face the human horrors rather than just record who won and who lost. >> i fear growing old. i also fear dying young. i'm most happy with a vodka

martini in my hand, but i can't stand the fact that the chatter in my head won't go quiet until there's a quart of vodka inside me. i hate being in a war zone. but i also feel compelled -- compelled -- to see it for myself. >> so it's really real. >> yeah. i think in order to -- matthew and i felt in order to do marie justice, we needed to go into the depths of her soul, and i think, you know, i'm very, very interested in the cost of doing any job at a high level whether it's sport or whether it's what you do, and i think, you know, i

think it's a very complicated place for the war correspondent because i'm sure you must feel when you're out there, you're exposed to so much trauma and so much of other people's pain, there must be a part, why am i feeling? you must feel. you cannot be exposed to that level of trauma without feeling. so where on earth does it go? and then you probably feel sort of guilty, wrongly, for having it haunt you because i think it's a very complicated position to occupy and i think it was very lonely and i'm sure you feel you should be able to pull yourself together when you're back on dry land. >> one of the reasons i called the book "in extremis" what i write about is people living in extremis and what happens in war. she lived her own life in extremis. that was it. i suppose i also want to say, because this is all serious stuff, she was the best company. she was the funniest person.

i used to think of us as the thelma and louise of the press corps. whenever i would be anywhere, marie would turn up. and there was an occasion, we're not supposed to joke about these things now, but there was an occasion we were on a stage, a woman got up and said how do you cope with the trauma? marie turned to me and said, well, lindsey and i, we go to bars and we drink. >> what do we call it, black humor. rosamund pike, thank you so much, lindsey hilsum. "a private war" and "in extremis." marie colvin. a real reporter and a real flesh and blood person. and an important note, the committee to protect journalists says 44 reporters have been murdered so far this year, 2018. today there is a sad anniversary. it is a year since the maltese

journalist daphne caruana galizia was killed by a car bomb, as you heard from lindsey hilsum there. she tirelessly was working to rout out corruption in her home country malta despite promising a full investigation. the case is not yet closed although three men have been charged with murder. according to police, the people suspected of ordering her killing have not yet been found. so now we shift to a much-needed good news story. it's about a woman also devoted to her work and how humankind is reaping the benefits of that work. dr. jennifer doudna took the world by storm when she and her colleagues discovered crispr cas9, a gene editing tool that could literally snip diseases out of our dna. and if that's not impressive enough, she is also the subject of the latest book by our walter isaacson who has previously detailed the lives of geniuses like benjamin franklin, einstein, steve jobs, and leonardo da vinci.

walter sat down with dr. doudna to talk about how these innovations could change humanity as we know it. in 2012 you and your team created a new tool using something called crispr to edit our genes, our dna. for the lay person explain what crispr technology is. >> crispr is for altering the dna in cells, the code of life, if you will. it's based on a bacterial immune system, the way bacteria fight viral infections. >> crispr technology is almost like a word process where you say i want to change this mistake i've made in spelling throughout the paper. you could do that throughout the human genome? >> that's a great analogy. >> take me through the sequence of how a crispr cas9 system works, from the very beginning

of it, it's spotting something to cutting it up. how does the whole process work? >> the process of gene editing using crispr cas9 begins with the protein, cas9, grabbing on to a molecule of rna that is providing the sequence of letters in the rna that matches a sequence of letters in dna. and this system, this protein goes searching through a cell looking, sort of sampling dna until it finds a match between the rna molecule and dna. when the match occurs it works like a scissors. it cuts the dna, cuts the double helix and the cell takes over, recognizes the dna is damaged and repairs it often by introducing a small or sometimes a large change to the dna sequence. >> and why will that be so transformative? >> this is a technology that allows scientists to make a change to the dna

so precise we can alter a single letter in the code of a human cell. and that's something that now gives scientists the power to alter disease causing mutations in dna but also to understand the genetics of disease in a way we haven't been able to in the past. >> and now what could it be used for in theory in humans? >> well,humans, amazingly, it's already going into clinical trials for cancer patients where it's being used to target particular tumors. in the not too distant future i think we'll see clinical trials for things like sickle cell anemia, muscular dystrophy, well-known diseases that have a single genetic basis that could be corrected. >> you're about to go to the huntington's conference. from this interview. tell me what people who have the disease say to you about what you're doing. >> i met a man in my office in berkeley who came to see me

because he explained his grandfather and his father had both died of huntington's disease and he had a sister who also had the disease mutation and had not yet succumbed to the disease but knew that was in her future. and it was heartbreaking to talk with him. it was also very motivating for me because i think huntington's is a disease where there's a well-known genetic basis. it occurs in one gene. that's the type of situation where gene editing in the not too distant future will have a real impact. i'm excited to be working to the day we can treat and potentially cure diseases like that. >> among scientists like yourself do you feel a sense of responsibility to end suffering and disease? >> i would say that all scientists at some level want to better our world and that includes being able to cure disease or at least treat disease and we all work towards

that goal in different ways. some scientists are doing it directly by studying a disease itself, and others, like me, are doing more fundamental research where we hope our more wide-ranging curiosity about the world will lead to unexpected discoveries. >> and how do you balance i want to do science that will have patents and will be used as tools to cure people versus science for its own sake and curiosity? >> well, i think they go hand-in-hand in my opinion. i think curiosity driven science drives the process of fundamental discovery, but, of course, i think scientists always hope those discoveries will have real impact on human society. >> at one of the conferences you did on the ethics of it, you were talking about how it would be unethical to try to fix things, maybe in the germ line, and trying to draw the line. and somebody said, well wait a

minute, wouldn't it be unethical not to do that? have your feelings evolved on where the ethical line is? >> they have. i think my initial thought about editing the human germ line, meaning in embryos, i had sort of a reaction against that idea. it seemed like it might be ethically fraught. i still think obviously there are challenges there. i think as i become more aware of opportunities to use gene editing to correct disease causing mutations early in life, i think that we have to consider those when we think about the potential to impact human health in the future. >> a single gene correcting a disease or syndrome seems morally pretty easy decision to make. it's broke. let's fix it. where do you get to the moral question that's harder?

>> when we think about making changes that become embedded into their genome and passed on to their children. that's editing of the germ line. this is an area where i think there's a lot of discussion at the moment about the ethics of that kind of use. >> give me an example what type of germ line editing could be done 10, 20 years from now. >> i think there's the potential to not only correct disease causing mutations. imagine that you could remove the huntington's disease gene from an entire family. that's a very interesting possibility. but also thinking about ways to help people live healthier lives through what i would call genetic vaccination, preventing them from getting disease before they succumb to it. >> is there a bright line, though, between preventing a disease and enhancing a human, and should we try to draw the line?

>> i think the line isn't very bright. there are sort of gray areas where it might be hard to say, is that an enhancement or helping the health of the person? that's where the ethical challenges come up. >> right. and so, in some ways, that makes a moral dilemma harder because responsible scientist also say this is complex. i'm not going to mess with it. but in other places, in other countries, people say, hey, come visit us. we will try these enhancements. >> they might. i think it would be hard to demonstrate they work in an animal system, for example. i don't see that in the near term. >> but in china, after you led a conference saying let's not do germ line editing, let's not do things that would be in the embryo and thus affect every future generation of that organism or that human, then in china they did it. not in one that would actually

carry on, but they showed they could do it in an embryo. >> to be fair that's been done in different countries including the united states. that time of research is certainly going on where people are studying very early human development in viable embryos, but they're not intended for implantation. they're not meant to create a person. so i think those experiments are in the realm of research. >> they're not intended to be implanted, but once you do it, it wouldn't be that hard to implant it if you were in china. >> that's correct. this is where we're facing a situation that's clearly on the horizon. >> and should there be government policy to draw a line? >> i think there should be policies and the question is how to put those in place and how to enforce them. i think having a global community of scientists who establish those policies will be key. >> are you worried about the administration's attack on science in the scientific community? >> it's interesting. over the course of my career in

science so far i think there's been a general distrust that's kind of grown around our country certainly, of the scientific community and the scientific method, and i'd like to change that. and i ask myself, why has this happened? i think scientists are partly to blame. i think we need to be more involved in public discussion about what we do and why it matters. >> and what could you do to inspire people that we should fund more basic research? >> i think crispr is a poster child for that. it's a great example of discoveries and technologies that come from unexpected curiosity driven research. >> when did you first become interested in biotechnology? >> well, biotechnology, you know, i'm old enough now that i sort of remember the early days of biotechnology, probably when i was an early graduate student in the early 1980s, but going back before that, i got interested in science when i was growing up in a rural town in

hawaii and i read jim watson's book about the discovery of the structure of dna. >> your father, i think, put the book on your bed when you were in middle school. >> correct, yeah, yeah. >> and you thought it was a detective tale and didn't read it for a while. >> that's right. and it is a detective tale. >> a detective tale somebody, two people, trying to figure out the structure of dna. >> well, multiple people. it was written about watson and crick but rosalynn franklin was a key player in that whole discovery process. as well as other scientists. when i read that book as a middle schooler, what came alive for me was the process of science and how human an endeavor it really is, good and bad. >> but then you told your high school guidance counselor, i think, that you wanted to be a scientist. this is in a public high school in hilo, hawaii. what happened? >> yeah, well, he said, girls don't do science. he didn't know me very well. that made me think, well, this one's going to.

>> why science? what's the joy for you of science? >> i love the process of discovery. i think that figuring things out about nature that maybe no one's ever understood before is very exciting for me, and i have to say i also really enjoy that process with people. i enjoy working with teams and especially smart, young students that come to the lab and want to figure out new things about the world. >> jennifer, thanks for being with us. >> thanks for having me. dr. doudna breaking new ground in biochemistry despite being told she couldn't be a scientist because she was a woman. the whole world is no doubt grateful she didn't listen to that high school counselor. and that is it for our program. thank you for watching "amanpour & co." on pbs and join us again tomorrow night. uniworld is a proud sponsor of "amanpour & co." when bea tollman founded a collection of boutique hotels,

she had bigger dreams, and those dreams were on the water -- a river, specifically -- multiple rivers that would one day be home to uniworld river cruises and their floating boutique hotels. today that dream sets sail in europe, asia, india, egypt, and more. bookings available through your travel agent. for more information, visit uniwld.com. >> additional support has been provided by rosalind p. walter. bernard and irene schwartz. sue and edgar wachenheim iii. the cheryl and philip milstein family. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

>> announcer: this is nightly business report with bill griffeth and sue herera. staying the course. the federal reserve hints at more rate hikes ahead. contributing to another volatile day on wall street. toy story, some of the world's largest retailers are making a play this holiday season for the $11 billion hole left by foist r us. >> are you feeling lucky? well there is more than $1.0 billion up for grabs this week as lottery fever grips the nation. those stories and more on nightly business report for wednesday, october 17th. and we do bid you good evening, everybody and welcome. it was the selloff that wasn't. when the opening bell rang this morning stocks fell sharply.