captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for saturday, march 23: the latest on the release of the mueller report; author don winslow on his book, "the border"; and a thriving jazz scene on the island nation of haiti. next on pbs newshour weekend. >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz. sue and edgar wachenheim iii. seton melvin. the cheryl and philip mitein family. dr. p. roy vagelos and diana t. vagelos. the j.p.b. foundation. rosalind p. walter. rbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided l by mut america--

designing customized individual rand grourement products. that's why we're your retirement company. radditional supas been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs thank you.om viewers like you. from t tisch wnet studios at lincoln center in new york, hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: good evening, and thanks for joining us. the coents are still secret, the attorney general is still iaviewing, and the demands to see spcounsel robert mueller's report on the almost two-year investigation into president trump and russian election interference are growing. photographers tracked the movements of attorney general william barr as he left home this morning. yesterday, in a letter to congreional leaders, barr said he anticipated he might be "in a position to advise you of the special counsel's principal lusions as soon as this weekend." president trump remained at his mar-a-lago estate in florida, where he played golf.

democrats and republicans held conference calls to consider strategies. house speaker nancy pelosi issued a statement to her democratic colleagues in advance of their call, asking that any briefings about the mueller report be "unclassified so that members can speak freely about every aspect of the report." for analysis and a look at what may be coming next, we turn to ryan goodman, a professor of law at new york university's school of law and co-editor in chief of the online forum, "just security." we're kind of in this n lding pattght now, but is there anything that prevents thi ts report a sort of digested version from being public documents? >> there's nothing that prevents it by a matter of law, so this really is the discretion of the attorney general. tsere might be some cav there for classified information, but that's the only kind of realaveat. otherwise, there's nothing barring him from being able to provide this to congress and to the public. >> sreenivasan: given that there has been public interest, even deemed by a vote fm the majority of the house that say, "hey, make this public,," right, i aan, is there strong incentive then for barr, for his

own transparency interest to make sure this all looks above board, try to make more of as public as possible? >> i thinko. i think it's an important historical moment. when he went uporhis nomination, he in fact basically commited to the senate that he would make it as transparent as possible consistent with the law. and since there's no real legal sition that he's in.s th and there's overwhelming support, it seems in the country, that the public really pewants to know what has hd here and what did mueller find. >> sreenivasan: the central dicted, who are mentioned, whond not been charged with any have crimes, their privacy has been protected. even though the past several years we have seen several staffers inside the department eey haven'ten charged withhof crimes. >> that's a concern ma mght come up with criminal prosecutions, and if somebody is

deemed not to be indtable because there is not proof beyond a reasonable doubt that they committed the crime. but this is a different setting. teeller is given the dan ma mandate of a counterintelings investigation to find out if there is derogatory information against people. and it's not really a response to say, "yes, bot bauz they did not commit a crime we can't know about it." you can easily see the justice department reach the view in the public interest they do need to reveal some of this information so that the public knows what exactly mueller found. maybe it's even exonerating, it actually says there'sood information, that people did not really go along with the russians. >> sreenivasan:ed about whatz durst or the special counsel finds toay, is there possibility here that this kicks some of these pieces of information down the road to say, the southern district of new york, or other jurisdictions that might have interest this? >> i think so. it's so difficult to know w in that report and what exactly was in mueller's mind when he deded to wrap now but i think a highly plausible

explanation of all of this is he completed his counterintelligence mandate. he finished his probe. that was the main object of-- and ren heeports that to congress, or he reports that to the attorn general. and fen if there's anything left over in a criminal setting heff hands ito the southern district of new york to the d.c. offi of the justice partment, as he's been d.n.a. with other parts of this investigation. this would be specialecause you would actually be handing off parts that deal with the russia element o it so that would be new, and that's why it's so city official difficult to tell without towing exacthoos that report. >> sreenivasan: sure. there's the report and then there's the kind of o interpretati that report and the public perception of that report and it seems luke a rohrshach tein america right now. if you're a supporter of the president, the president has called it a witch hunt 180-plus times and sa it's a hoax in the first place, and of course, democrats on the other side who have been putting a lot of political eggs in this bas and saying let's wait for this

report. regardless of what is published orrow, this week, feople are not that likely to move their kind o points of view on things. >> i think that might be right. it's jst-- it's a sorry state about our political affairs in the sense that we might hae very credible information coming from miewcialg one way or the other. and the spin is going to happen in one direction or the other. people already have their preconceived views in a certain sense about what happened in 2016 and what they think about this president. soig of i think it's going to be a really interesting and important moment for the coury to see whether or not something like this can actually penetrate anchange people's minds. >> sreenivasan: ryan goodman from nyu, anded "just security" block. >> thank you >> sreenivasan: for more on special counsel robert mueller'. report, visit g/newshour. >> sreenivasan: y ma unnecessarared the personal data of more than two million disaster survivors with a government contractor. individuals who shared information with fema from the

california wildfires in 2017 and hurricanes harvey, irma and maria might now be a of fraud and identity theft. the sensitive personal information included the last-ig fours of social security numbers, addresses and banking information, according to a report from the department of fmeland security's office the inspector general. fema says it "has taken aggressive measures to correct this error" and that it found no indication survivor data was compromised. it took a jury in pittsburgh four hours to find a white former east pittsburgh police officer not guilty of murder or manslaughter in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager last june. outside the courthouse, protestors shouted "antwon rose," the name of the 17-year- old who shot and killed after a traffic stop. the former officer, michaeld rosfeld, sai pulled over a car that rose was in because it matched the description of a car in a drive-by shooting. rose was running from the car when rosfeld shot him in the back, side and face.

a lawyer for rose's family said they may challenge the verdict in pennsylvania's supreme court and on the federal level. experts are warning that the flooding rk in the midwest is far from over. as spring temperatures warm the region, snowmelt in northern states like minnesota and north d kota will send more water into the mississippi ssouri rivers. the army corps of engineers is urging those living in affected zones to remain alert. thousands have been forced to evacuate tir homes and farms in nebraska, missouri, and iowa, and damage from the recent floods iestimated to be at least $3 billion. >> sreenivasan: last month, when novelist don winslow published "the border," the final nol in his bestselling trilogy about america's drug wars, the "new york times"aid it landed right on the culture's front- burner. as much as anyone, winslow has charted the decades-long link between the power of the drug cartels and the flood of immigrants seeking a new life, and between what the author considers failed policy and

countless deaths and ruined lives. newshour weekend special correspondent jeff greenfield recently visited don winslow at his southern california home-- fittingly, not far from the mexican boreer. >>dent trump's most popular talking points in the last few weeks, the ns of thousands of central american migrants headed toward the u.s. southern border. >> reporter: it has dominated our political debate... !> build that wa build that wall! >> reporter: it helped elect a president. >> president trump, you will not t your wall. >> reporter: it triggered a month-long government shutdown. >> hey, hey, ho, ho! shutdown's got to go! >> reporter: and the president has declared it a national emergence >> becauseve an invasion of drugs, invasion of gangs, isvasion of people. >> reporter: "ithe toxic mix of mexican drug cartels, unspeakable violence, ns of asylum seekers, and a major mestic political fight. just 40 miles from the sanbo diego-tijuana rder, in the mountain tn of julian, california, novelist don winslow has spent 20 yrs chronicling

the story of the drug wars that have triggered so much of this controversy. the hoific violence as cartels battle for supremacy. the murder of hundreds of journalists and officials that has driven so many on a perilous search for safety. his new novel, "the border," now at the top of ma bestseller orsts, is the concluding work of a trilogy that was out of a single two-decade-old news story. >> i remember the date: september 20, 1998. i get up in the morning and my... the first thing i do every morning is, i look at the newspapers. and that morning, in the "san diego union-tribune," there was a story about 19 innocent men, women and children slaughtered in a town just across the border because it was thought by the local cartel that one of them was an informer. >> reporter: that story inspired winslow to write 2005's "the power of the dog," chronicling american efforts to battle theri of a drug cartel led by a thinly-f joaquin guzman, known better as

"el chapo." winslow thought that one book uld be all, but the escalating violence and the escalating efforts by the united states to fight what it calls "a drug war," kept him returning to the story. he followed with "the cartel" in 15. and now, with "the border," winslohas come to one stark conclusion. what is it aut this drug war, about what's going on, that you think americans most need to kn and may not know? >> that it's not the mexican drug problem; it's the arican drug problem. we-- we point our fingers, increasingly so with t administration, at mexico. "oh, those criminals are coming up oh, those drugs are coming up." yes. why? because we buy the drugs.

if i were standing on the other side of that border, of that proposed wall, i might want to build a wall because something like $65 billion in drug money nd, basically, terroristl to organizations that are destabilizing mexican society, mexican politics and the mexican economy. >> reporter: america's so-called "war on drugs" began almost 50 years ago, promoted by presidents from both parties. >> america's public enemy number one in the united states is drug abus a >> dru menacing our society. they're threatening our values and undercutiong our instit. n we've had more major drug dealers arrested t any urprevious similar time in history. >> reporter: for winslow, much, most of the efforts to fihet this war--hetoric of presidents going back decades, the endless oto ops of drug seizures, even the recent conviction of cartel leader guzman, "el chapo"-- have been exercises in futility. >> and all you have to do is look at the numbers. since he was captured and

recaptured or re-recaptured, the importation of drugs into america has not fallen; it's risen. the number of overdose deaths have not fallen; it's risen. >> reporter: and as for building a wall to stop the flow drugs? >> if you read the d.e.a.'s last five annual threat assessment reports, isays right in there what we-- all of us have always known, that 90% or more of the illicit drugs that come through the mexican border come through p.o.e.s, points of entry. there are 52 of them on the mexican-american border, but three that really matter. and most of the drugs come in tractor-trailer trucks right through those legal ports of try. >> reporter: and it's at these three ports-- san diego, california; laredo, and el paso, texas-- through which an unstoppable flood of drugs flows into the united stes coery day.

>> one every 15 s through el paso, for instance. about 5,000 a day through these ports of entry. so, there's nogoay that you're g to stop and search those trucks unless you completely shut dowcommerce between the united states and mexico, which you cannot do becausyou will wreck the economies of two countries. >> reporter: for winslow, the whole notion that these travelers crossi the border pose the danger of violence is wrongheaded. in fact, he says, mostf these people are fleeing the violence of drug cartels, who often recruit children to act as drug "mules" on paiof death. and he took us to the mountains where many are abandoned by their "guides" to grapple with literally life-threatening weather. w re looking down at the desert floor. the-- the kind of bitter irony is that the immigrants get dropped off out there, either coming across the mountains where they could freeze to death m right down there in the desert, just a fewes, where they die of heat exposure.

>> reporter: winslow's novels also paint a picture of powerful financial interests in the united states-- banks, investment companies-- that wittingly or not laundts the drug pro and after two decades immersed in this world, winslow has b emerged withnt, provocative answer to the question: what to do? l >> well, ialize drugs. >> reporter: all of them? >> all of them. >> reporter: control them? just let them-- free market? does it matter? >> listen, i-- i'd like to see, you know, us talk about any ofss those ilities. what i know right now is that w whre doing, treating it as a law enforcement problem or-- god help us-- a military problem, doesn't work. every horror story you can tell e me about heroin and cocad meth and all of them, right? and i-- i've seen them firsthand. happens while they were ilgal. every one of them. so, i think what we need to do is, yes, at least decriminalize;

more emphasis on diversion programs, trying to get people treatment. but one thing we definitely want to do is take the profit out of these drugs because it's the leprofit that is funding v sociopaths to the points of billions of dollars a year. >> sreenivasan: much of the news we hear from haiti has to do with natural disasters and political crises. but, of course, a society has much more than that.ac in the island nation is also home to a vibrant and growing arts scene. newshour weekend's yvette feliciano reports from the capital city of port au prince on one of that country's biggest cultural events, which attracts top musicians from around the globe. >> ♪ life's greatra life's ♪ future's all planned ♪ no more

clouds in the sky ♪ how i'm riding i'm riding hig ♪ >> reporer: on a warm winter evening in haiti, ja singer cecile mclorin salvant performs before a live audience at e 13th annual port au prince international jazz festival, or pop jazz. >> ♪ somewhere there must be a place ♪ where two heartbeats can uch where lovers can meet in the ♪ daylight and find it's enough. ♪ >> rorter: salvant, who won her third grammy for best jazz vocal album in february, is american but also has family in haiti. >> haiti is a strange, strange land for me. it is extremely familiar on the one hand, probably because of my ancestry, and yet i'm a total alien here. i'm a total tourist.

merci. ( cheers and applause ) >> reporter: performing at pop jazz gives salvant the opportunity to connect with her haitian roots in different ways, like visiting with students in the haitian education and leadership program. they favor her with some of the music they've been working on.mu ( c playing, singing ) and saant returns the favor. >> ♪ quand il me prend ns ses bras ♪ il me parle toubas je vois la vie en rose. ♪ i want to get to know haiti in a much deeper way. i want to refamiliarize myself with this place that is somehow back there somewhere, you know. ( band playing ) >> reporter: for 33-year-old singer-songwriter paul beaubrun,

pop jazz offers an opportunity to reconnect. born and raised in port au prince, beaubrun was sent to live in new york city when he was 17 because of political unrest in haiti. how did that experience shape you as a young man and your relationship to haiti? >> yeah. in the beginning, it was hard, you know. i was-- i was very depressed even though i have family, you know.ed i stith my aunts. i love new york. you know, those age, like, 17, 16, 17, 18, you're like-- you don't know who you are yet, you know.tr i wanted my coto raise me more, but it didn't happen that way. ( band playing ) >> reporter: since 2007, pop hejazz has been bringing t artists from all over the world. this year, the festival hosted some two dozen musical acts from haiti, the u.s., europe, the middle east, and latin america.

( drum solo ) in addition live concerts, the festival features musicalad workshops and itional haitian performances like rara, street music performed with horns and percussion. ( percussive music playing ) pop jazz founder joel widmeyer says the festival helps to showcase haiti's contribution to world music as well as his country's ability to host an international event. >> we tried to do-- to show the variety of haitian music that's important to us, and we mix it with jazz. it's a music that embraces all the culture. from europe is very different from what they do in this states. it's a different sound, it's ach different apprith the music. and latin jazz, also. so, in one night, you can see three concerts, and e all different.si >> ( ing, jazz playing )

>> reporter: cecile mclorinth salvant note jazz itself has roots in haitian music. after the haitian revolution ndended in 1804, many free enslaved haitians ended up in new orleans. >> a lot of people want to talkj about, likz was born inch new orleans, ws in some ways true. but it, to me, was borne out of this particularly american fusion of all these different kinds of music. haiti was a part of that. and then, what is very interesting to me is these cycles of influence. and then, you know, haitian musicians then being influenced by jazz and by bebop later. you hear it in a lot of-- a lot of haitian music. ( band playing, singing ) >> reporter: paul beaubrun says

he feels those influences throughout his own work. >> for me, it's natural to play blues, jazz. it's natural to play reggae. it's natural to play soul, r&b. if you hear them, they're not that different. they are sisters and brothers, you know. same mother. so, they are all one family. >> reporter: beaubrun hopes that pop jazz will put haiti on morel people's musap. what are you hoping visitors from outside of the country will get from the jazz fest? >> i hope they become haiti's ambassadors. you can see a whole differentn side of ite beauty, the people. ( band playing ) >> this is pbs newshour weeke,

saturday. >> sreenivasan: u.s.-backed forces in syria claimed military victory over isis today,ne day after the trump administration announced the end of fighting there. commanders of the syrian democratic forces planted their flag above the town of baghouz and showed reporters the aftermath of weeks of fighting there. at a ceremony at the nearby omar field base, a senior state department official said the territorial defeat is a "critical milestone," but heis also sai remains a threat. an international rescue mission is under way in southern africa, where hundreds have died and tens of thousands are stranded after a cyclone deva parts of mozambique, zimbabwe, and malawi. the storm, which frtst hit the po city of beira, mozambique, on march 14 before moving inland, destroyed homes, damaged and bridges, and knocked out power and communications. members of indian and south african military forces are joining aid groups searching for

survivors and trying to deliver hefood and supplies across still-flooded region. hundreds of thousands of protesrs marched in london today, demanding a second referendum obrexit, britain's 2016 vote to leave the european union. london's mayor, sadiq khan, joined the march, te reporters that the only way to unite britain is for theeople to have the final say on brexit. britain was scheduled to leave the e.u. on march 29. european union negotiators agreed to a complicated extension that may give prime minister theresa mayntil april 12 to come up with a deal. for the 19th straighweekend, yellow vest demonstrators gathered in paris and other french citietoday, but this time the military was called on to assist the police and protect property. the marchers were nned from the champs-elysees in paris and central neighborhoods in several other cities. thousands gathered in a southern section of paris today to again protest president emmanuel macron's economic policies. last weekend, the demonstrations turned violent in paris, where several fires were set and windows were smashed, leading ti the new restctions.

>> sreenivasan: join us againrr to for the latest on the attorney general's continuing review and possible release of inform report.m the mueller that's all for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. i'm hari sreenivasan. thanks for watching. have a good night. captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: bernard and irene schwartz.

i sue and edgar wachenhe. seton melvin. the cheryl and philip milstein family. dr. p. roy vagelos and diana t. vagelos. the j.p.b. foundation.li ro p. walter. barbara hope zuckerberg. corporate funding is provided by mutual of america-- nd designing customizedidual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for blic broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. be more.

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