>> rose: welcome to the program. we begin this evening talking about jared kushner. son-in-law and senior advise tore president trump. also feedback from europe after the president's trip abroad especially coming from german chancellor angela merkel. we talk to lionel barber of the "financial times" and mark mazzetti of the "new york times." >> the heart of this is what was jared kushner seeking from sergei kidsly i don't care and sergei go kov and what were their interested in from kushner. we continue with an update on tiger woods, arrested on d.u.i. charges on monday. >> my first reaction was shock because it was a mug shot of

disaster, i guess. frankly, in terms of the actual episode, i wasn't shocked. not that i expected something, but i felt for a while and i think a lot of people have, you know, just intuitively that tiger has been struggling and having a difficult life, especially since 2009. >> rose: we turn to filmmaker laura poitras, her new film "risk" profiles wikileaks co-founder julian assange. >> at his best, he's brilliant and willing to take risks for what he believes in, and at his worst he's -- at his worst, he can be vindictive, he can be vain, and he can, you know, be a bit of a trickster. >> rose: and we conclude this evening with john wood, founder of "room to read," an organization that promotes children's littersy. >> you're born in a low-falcon country to uneducated parents, you don't have a chance to get

educated. the world starts by educating children. if you want to change things over a 20-year or 30-year time horizon, no better place than to start with the five-year-olds, six-year-olds, get them in school and literate and give them the same base you and i have benefited from our whole lives. lionel barber, mark mazzetti, jaime diaz, laura poitras and john wood, when we continue. >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose.

>> rose: we begin this evening with look at events surrounding the trump administration. angela merkel expressed doubts about the united states as an ally sunday in germany. her comments after president trump's refusal to recommitment to the paris climate change at the g7. the president wrote a series of tweets about his administration. jared kushner is said to have been investigated by the f.b.i. as part of the probe into russian interference in the presidential election. mark mazzetti of the "new york times" joins me from washington. here in new york, lionel barber of the financial times. mark, let me begin with you and

ask a very basic question. what do we know -- what is it went to know about jared kushner and these conversations he had with the russian ambassador. >> what was discussed, what each person wanted, what the russians were interested in and kushner was interested in. why was this done outside normal diplomatic channels. normally when a candidate is elected, a system is in place during transition with the state department giving briefings to the presidentia president-elect. the apparatus is available to set up phone calls with foreign leaders, et cetera.

that's the way things normally work during a transition. in this case, the trump administration was unique in going around that apparatus, whether it would be to place a phone call with the leader of taiwan and other foreign leaders, you will recall in the early days after the election, leaders were calling in to the switch board at trump tower to try to reach president-elect trump. so why was this all done outside normal channels? but the heart of this is what was jared kushner seeking from both sergei kislyak the russian ambassador and sergey gore cove and the bank. >> rose: why was mr. gorkov there, because of his relationship with vladimir putin? >> in march we reported the

meeting kushner had with gorkov, after a meeting he had with kislyak, the ambassador. when we approached the white house at the time, we asked why was one related to the other? and they said that, well, ceaselyiac had recommended gorkov, recommended kushner speak to him but they didn't say why. we now believe that, at least in part, the meeting with gorkov was designed so that kushner could have a more direct channel to moscow, possibly to speak to someone who more directly has the ear of vladimir putin. so this was a further effort to set up some kind of communications. now, that's at least part of it, and there's more that we would want to know about the meeting. why have this meeting with a russian banker whose bank is under u.s. economic sanctions, and what would be the reason for not, of course, disclosing that on your security clearance form

which jared kushner did not do. >> rose: did jared kushner acknowledge that michael flynn was in the meetings? >> well, none of these people have said anything publicly about h this. so there is a lot of different stories coming out based on people who were either in the room or with knowledge of people who were in the room. now, what we have reported is that, during the first meeting, the meeting with kislyak, michael flynn was there. we do not believe flynn was in a subsequent meeting with sergey gorkov. >> rose: have they acknowledged he was in the meeting with the russian ambassador, michael flynn? >> i don't know whether anyone acknowledged it publicly. i don't know if the white house said that publicly. that's our understanding, our reporting, and i've seen that elsewhere as well that flynn was in the meeting with kislyak. >> rose: what do you make of this, lionel, as you sit at your perch in london? >> i point to the conversations

i had with the russians and people afar late last year. it's important to look at the context. this is independent of any collusion with the russians regarding the campaign. what i'm talking about is the international context and particularly the economic sanctions imposed on russia as a result of the invasion of crimea, the annexation of crimea and the military invasion through surrogates of eastern ukraine. these sanctions have been renewed under the obama administration but have become progressively difficult. a lot of people in europe, italy, some in germany, german industry were against this. the trump administration was clearly looking for a reset of relations with vladimir putin, with russia. so i believe, based on the conversations that i've had --

somewhat i can't verify this not talking to general flynn or ambassador kislyak -- but what the russians were looking for was a phased reduction in sanctions and abrogation of sanctions. for example, the first thing everybody was looking for were an easing of financial sanctions on banks. i would be looking at that, if i was trying to explain why mr. gorkov was involved in a back-channel conversation with jared kushner. also, obviously, he's close to vladimir putin. >> rose: there were conversations with mr. kislyak about sanctions according to some of the reporting so far, correct? >> that's right. you have to look at the broad geopolitical context and what was happening during this whole month period. we certainly know that michael

flynn had long-standing relations with russian officials from his time at the defense intelligence agency. he went to moscow in december 2015. we know that the trump administration was possibly amenable to easing sanctions. we also know that, at the end of december, flynn talked to kislyak and, while he initially said and told some in the white house, they didn't really talk about anything, we now know that they discussed sanctions and also specifically the new sanctions that president obama imposed in late december about the russian campaign to disrupt the election. so this was in the conversation, it was in the mix. lionel was right. it would be certainly surprising that if in those conversations with kushner and kislyak and gorkov that the sanctions didn't come up. certainly, if i were mr. gorkov, i probably would have brought it up. so this is high on the agenda of the russians, and, so, you know, we have to know more about what

was discussed. >> rose: you have written, mark, correct me if i'm wrong, the fact there were conversations in the early part of the trump administration about easing the sanctions against russia? >> right. we wrote that today that, in the early days, there was actually even a draft executive order about lifting sanctions that didn't go anywhere, but it was certainly something that some on the transition and in the administration early on thought it was something that could be done as a way to possibly improve relations between the united states and rug. it would be very high on the agenda of the russians, and if the trump administration had wanted to seek other things from the russians, maybe they saw that as a bargaining chip. >> rose: is there any evidence so far that the trump administration, through jared kushner or anyone, michael flynn or anyone else, was trying to

get the russians help donald trump win the presidency? >> there is no evidence i've seen. there is no evidence yet that i've seen reported of what we have sort of commonly called collusion, right, that we know that there were contacts last year, there is question about, though, what those contacts were about. what everyone is certainly looking at, and now there are several investigations going on, not only the f.b.i. but also on capitol hill, to the fundamental question -- was there an effort the help the russians in the campaign to disrupt the election -- and that's the heart of the matter. as of yet, we've not seen anything. >> i think it's also important to say that these sanctions are really hurting members of the russian elite and their children. they like to travel. they like to open bank accounts, move money around. lifting these sanctions, particularly financial sanctions, would have been

immensely looked at favorably by the russian elite. the question is -- >> rose: and mr. gorkov is one of the people who would be helped by that. >> absolutely. the question i would ask is what was mr. trump looking for in return? he surely wasn't offering a blank check. >> rose: was he looking for help on the election? >> well, i think -- >> rose: disrupting the clinton people and all that. >> well, there's no -- there's a lot of people who think the way the relations deteriorated between russia and the united states during the obama administration largely triggered by the invasion of eastern ukraine and the annexation of crimea, that things could only, if you like, get better, and there was also syria on the table. but that's not what i think this was about. >> rose: what do you think this was about? >> i think that mr. trump has a different -- again, when we

interviewed mr. trump we didn't have a long discussion of what he thought about vladimir putin -- but he along with other strategists feel there was a way of resetting relations with russia. russia's a very important geopolitical player. why not start. again, though, what were they getting in return? what guarantees on future behavior, conduct, et cetera? and that's incredibly unclear. >> rose: mark, have there been any allegations he has done something illegal rather than simply being questionable and, secondly, against the precedent of previous administrations? >> no. i mean, there's not yet anything to suggest that there was anything illegal about these conversations, about having the meetings. in and of itself, as we said in the story today, setting up whil during a transition, is in and of itself not illegal.

what would get you there would be, of course, the content of any conversations or anything leading up to that. so the answer up to this point is no. >> rose: and the explanation why they might have wanted to do this through the russians at the russian embassy or somewhere like that where they thought it would be safe from surveillance by the united states was? >> well, you know, i'm not confirming that report. that was in a post-report the other -- "post" report the other night and we haven't confirmed he made the ask that it be done in the russian facilities. we certainly would think that if this was some kind of effort at a back-channel, they'd find perhaps some way to have a conversation that they didn't think was perhaps being monitored. but as to that detail, i'm not quite sure. >> rose: you know what's interesting, and i'm not sure, mark, how you feel about this, but what we're having here in

america with "the washington post" and the "new york times" is a very healthy competition in washington to pursue this story without any sense of winning or losing. but you hear different people have different stories and it's fascinating and i assume the readers are the beneficiaries of that. >> well, i'm certainly reeling. both papers, by the way. but it is extraordinary, isn't it, how the trump administration, the president himself has a complete disdain for the establishment and the experts. no state department involved whatsoever. it's very striking. it's almost as if he's out of the system. >> rose: let me turn to something that you are an expert in and mark is spending a lot of time in washington looking at the diplomacy of the united states. so the president goes to saudi arabia, then rome, and he goes to brussels and he goes -- i'm not sure. i think that was the order -- and then to sicily. so he goes to n.a.t.o., to g7.

people look at saudi arabia and say that was more of a success than what happened afterwards, and what it ended up in is a headline that chancellor merkel says the united states, based on the last few days, cannot be considered -- the -- what's the word she used -- a reliable ally as we have thought about in the past? >> well, if you read the german and watch the tape, it's a little bit more nuanced. it's to a degree, this kind of language, but, obviously, the thrust of the message was very clear, and it came after a pretty bruising encounter both on a bilateral meetings between the european leaders and the president and the speech that the president gave at the new n.a.t.o. headquarters where he lectured the europeans for not spending enough. he also gave the germans a very hard time about their trade

surplus. >> rose: did he say "bad germans"? >> a word that could mean evil or bad. i think we'll go for bad. but he didn't actually say that to chancellor merkel, he said it to the head of the commission. this is undiplomatic language. the most important thing is this -- actually, and i'm going to maybe sound a little odd here, charlie, so bear with me -- actually, what president trump was saying was not so different from what a succession of senior officials have said both publicly and privately about european deadbeats not coming up to the mark when it comes to spending their -- what they've committed to do, which is 2% of g.d.p., for their n.a.t.o. budget, including the brits. bob gates five years ago when he was defense secretary went to brussels and gave a big lecture

saying this alliance is over. >> rose: barack obama kept making it time after time. >> the difference is the tone and the way its delivered is verging on the boorish and that's the problem. >> rose: but this also had to do with the paris conference, too. >> yeah, and that's coming. we don't know what president trump is going to do, but i can tell you, if he walks out, if he decides america should walk out of the paris climate change accord, that will be a really serious blow to any -- and i think it will bring the europeans closer to china because china signed up. i think this would be -- america would be close in this particular area to being a pariah. we would be way outside international norms. i think it's also striking, when you have companies like exxon that, in the past, were very skeptical about climate change, that they're saying, actually, they think america should remain part of the paris accord. so i think this is all the

backdrop to chancellor merkel's comments, which are, one, we're worried about america first, and, two, europe may need to try and do things more on their own. >> rose: the fact he would not commit himself to article 5 when he was at the nate. >> well, yeah, not publicly, but i think by the fact ehe referred to 2001 when it was invoked, then i think that maybe he wasn't being so strict. >> rose: you seem to be saying that this relationship between the united states and europe is moving into a very, very fragile place. >> indeed, and i think what is striking, watch this space. the center is holding in europe. everybody thought with brexit and president trump's victory that this would lead to further fragmentation in europe. actually, post-dutch eleions and particularly macron's stunning win in the french election and merkel's comments

sunday, i think you're seeing in a funny paradoxial way president trump is increasing unity in europe and if ms. merkel wins in september some further moves toward -- >> rose: so here's your headline, mark, who united europe? donald trump. ( laughter ) thank you very much. >> thank you. >> rose: we'll be right back. stay with us. >> rose: tiger woods was found asleep at the wheel monday morning near his home in jupiter, florida, according to a police report released today. the 14-time grand slam golf champion was arrested and charged with driving under the influence. in the officer's account, woods' black mercedes was stopped in ake light and blinkerhe car's ods said he had an unexpected reaction to prescribed medications and alcohol was not involved. woods' breathalyzer test for alcohol was negative. the incident marked a continuation of a stunning far of one of america's greatest

athletes. a interview at this table last fall where he spoke act his effort to get back on track. >> i had to be honest about myself and that's part of going through what i went through is i messed up. i shunned away a lot of things. i didn't communicate with, for instance, elin very well, and i learned from it. flip side, you know, fast forward, i'm a better communicator now. i talk to people more on a deeper level, and i learned a lot. >> rose: joining me from raleigh, north carolina, jaime diaz, editor in chief of "golf world" and senior writer of "golf digest" and one of the people who's interviewed tiger woods and knows him very well. tell me when you saw the picture and heard the news, what was your first reaction? >> my first reaction at seeing the picture was shock because it was such a vivid, incredible sort of stereotypical mug shot

of disaster, i guess. but, you know, frankly, in terms of the actual episode, i wasn't shocked, and not that i expected something, but i felt for a while and i think a lot of people have, you know, just intuitively that tiger's been struggling and having a difficult life especially since 2009, and that he hadn't quite dealt with it, although as he talked about in his interview with you, there was some progress being made, but you didn't get the sense he was truly liberated from it and maybe something was still pent up and these kind of things manifest. >> rose: we all pay homage to the remarkable talent and the remarkable performance on the golf course and how distinctive he was, you know, and to see him unable to do it for all the reasons that we speculate about, you know, it's just -- you don't want that to be. as i said wean i interviewed him, everybody's vested in tiger coming back to be tiger because

it was such a thing to see. >> absolutely, charlie. you know, there was excellence there, and it's remarkable how much people, even though there is so much negative comment about tiger's life and his mistakes, how much in the present when people are at the golf tournaments, they really root for him. there's something about not just his excellence they root for but there's that kind of lost humanity they want to see come out, i think that's really, they're rooting for him as a person to kind of grow and get past this thing, and all the time realizing how difficult it must be because of the position he's in. he's under scrutiny. he's at the top of the world, everybody is watching, everything he does is critiqued and he always tried to hold the image of being perfect and he was anything but and that shock is one that i think is one that's still reverberating with

him and i think people just sense that and realize the battle ahead is a tough one and that he needs our help in a way, you know, and it really is a very nice, collective feeling you get when you watch tiger play in terms of the galleries. i'm not sure tiger appreciates it completely how much support h really has out there. i think he's still kind of wondering who's thinking what and will i ever get over this and will people ever forgive me. i think he's forgiven. it's just a matter now of him forgiving himself. >> rose: should anybody say, well, he's bottomed out? >> well, certainly it's being said all over, and i don't know. you know, frankly, the -- what's transpired as far as the police investigation on this and the police report, it was not alcohol, and i think that would have been more stigmatizing, had it been. you know, certainly, he was out there in a dangerous situation, you know, his car was damaged, he could have hurt somebody obviously, but i think the public in general was more forgiving with prescription drugs possibly being, you know,

in the wrong dosage, a pies take made somehow. i think he's got a little bit of leeway there compared to if it had just been a strictly drunk driving thing with alcohol. so now that's a good thing in terms of him not being reviled, but i hope he doesn't feel he can kind of just put it aside and never deal with this as far as publicly talk about it or -- and i think his statement tends to say, you know, look, i've got to do better. he's aware. there's culpability here. again, he's got to deal with going forward, getting his mind right so he can play golf again. >> rose: you need a mission to overcome a handicap, an injury, competition, you really need to feel a sense of overwhelming obsession and almost being a maniac about winning. >> yes, he was a maniac about winning. he could be a maniac, again, in a very productive way. >> rose: exactly! in terms of his legacy, and

any kind of comeback now would be so memorable. i mean, we revere ben hogan's memory because of the comeback. >> rose: right. tiger woods could have, in a different way, a comeback even more spectacular, more memorable, more noble, almost, because really overcoming himself more than just injuries. >> rose: when i hear you say that you're suggesting and you're right that tiger woods could have a comeback in which he comes to grips and changes himself in terms of whatever his vulnerabilities are. i happen to believe his vulnerabilities are directly tied to his physical health and the physical health is extricably tied to his inability to get back as the kind of golf player he wanted. others, and you may be one of them, believe strongly that it is inside his head and that all of this comes from whatever embarrassment and frustration there is in his head. >> well, you know, i think it's

a combination. i do think though that there's actually been good news on this physical front. this back fusion was quite invasive and probably a last resort as far as fixing his back. he's not in pain. of course, he's saying that. we take him at his word but at the same time others who have had similar fusion surgeries say that the pain does disappear. now, maybe some mobility is slightly lost but, frankly, if pain was the biggest issue with his golf swing and that's now gone, i think physically he's in a position to play good golf again and that's why i think it falls back on the the mental challenge being the determiner as far as what happens in the future. >> rose: so what is it that he d here that is so bad, if, in fact, as he said, he took medications that had an impact that he didn't foresee? >> well, i think just embarrassment. honestly, no damage is really done. nobody got hurt, fortunately. >> rose: no one else was

involved. >> no one else was involved that we know of. i mean, it may be, worst case scenario at this point might show evidence of a drug dependency and that would certainly be a setback for him in terms of his public image and perhaps, then again, it could end up being a good thing that it's all out in the open. i don't suggest i know anything about that. that was quite a foggy state of mind he was in, obviously, if you read the police report. just makes you wonder -- >> rose: the police report, tell us what it said before we leave. the police report -- >> well, tiger was asleep and off to the side of the road, the blinker was on, as you say, and the policeman woke him up and asked him questions and his answers were disoriented. he failed the field sobriety test, the physical field sobriety test, and he just, you know, was kind of out of it. so that's, you know, with the possibility of that would have

been horrendous had he kept driving. but it does show that was -- if he made a mistake with the medications, he made a big mistake because that was quite an extreme condition that he was in as far as being almost unconscious. >> rose: and if there is an addiction, it would be to prescription drugs, probably. >> well, perhaps, painkillers. we don't know. group, that's difficult to even suggest, but certainly there was intoxication there, and it wasn't from alcohol, so the cause of it is still to be kind of, i think, sort of determined in the future here. >> rose: the interesting thing is when he talked to me about it in the conversation here at the table, he said to me, you know, he said, look, i realize i can't do things physically that i used to do. what i have to do, and i haven't been able to do beyond the physical impairment that he had and hopefully that's been corrected, i'm not the -- i don't have the strength, i don't

have the athleticism i once did, so, therefore, what i have to do is figure out other ways to win. >> sure, just be more precise, more repetitive, hit the ball more solid. ben hogan was not solid when he was hitting championships at 41. you have to have power, it certainly helps. knowing where the ball is going is what it's all about. tiger has been great getting the ball around the golf course. >> rose: i think that's why people used the word you used, sadness, because you can go from sadness to somewhere much better. it's not over. it is a sad story because, somehow, we all admire someone who could do something better than anybody we've ever seen do it and tiger, at one point, could do that and he is still young. thank you as always. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: back in a moment.

stay with us. >> rose: laura poitras is here. her 2014 film on edward snowden "citizen four" won the academy award for best documentary feature. her new documentary "risk" portrays wikileaks founder julian assange. following assange as he confronts alcongratulations of sexual assault and oversees document dumps. the "new york times" describes the film unfinished in a way that is fascinating, frustrating and entirely understandable. the trailer for "risk." ( ringing ) >> hello, can i please speak to hillary clinton? calling from the office of julian assange. this is an emergency. >> this is not the film i thought i was going to make. i thought i could ignore the contradictions.

i thought they were not part of the story. i was wrong. they are becoming the story. >> the filmmaker named laura poitras. laura poitras is known through the community as a documentary filmmaker for the entire u.s. >> the tensions at the border have become more aggressive. when i got home mix apartment door was open. did i forget to close it or are they sending me a message? sometimes i can't believe what julian went through. >> i can't be certain unless one of them is assassinated. >> the f.b.i. is investigating the russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. >> trying to make it clear we don't have a problem, you have a problem. >> rose: i'm pleased to have

laura poitras at this table. welcome. >> great to be here. >> rose: after the success of the snowden film, did you immediately want to turn to assange as a documentary subject? >> it was a complicated process because i had begun filming with julian in 20 is 1, so i was filming with wikileaks in 2011, 2012 then contacted by edward snowden in 2013, for a while, i thought maybe it was one film. there are similar overlapping themes. once i got in the editing room i was, like, there is no way a story can have both. i finished and didn't know what i was going to do and went back to this footage because i think julian, i know he's a divisive and polarizing person, but there's no doubt that he's somebody who has kind of changed the landscape of journalism. >> rose: in what way? well, you know, julian -- so wikileaks was founded in 2006, and i think he understood before a lot of people how the internet was going to change

global politics and how it was going to change journalism, both for better and for worse. when i started filming, it was after the first manning releases had come out which were the war logs and the collateral murder video, and for me as somebody who had been documenting post-9/11 america, i thought this was really important information that we needed to know, u.s. foreign policy and wars. then you have sort of today, where you're seeing kind of almost one of the more bad manifestations of how the internet can be used to change global politics. so i just think julian's fascinating. he also understood that, for journalists, the job that we do, to protect sources, it's not enough to say, i'm not going to testify, because, with the powers of surveillance that we now have, you need anonymous tools, you need to be able to provide a way to give security to sources. so he did all these things, and

he created what's called an anonymous drop box, so a source can drop information without saying who they are, and that's what they have been doing. now almost every news room, i think in the country now, has a similar dropbox. >> rose: finish this sentence for me. at his best he is -- at his that's a good question. at his best, he's brilliant, and he's willing to take risks for what he believes in. at his worst, he's -- at his worst, he can be vindictive, he can be vain and he can, you know, be a bit of a trickster. then in terms of his accomplishing, i guess what i would have the most -- where my questions come in are his decisions not to redact certain types of information. so, for instance, if we look at

the d.n.c. e-mails, you know, he was in a position where he received newsworthy information, and he's claiming he doesn't know who the source is. >> rose: everybody believes it came from the russians yes. but what comey says in this hearing where he told the public that he was investigating possibly connections between trump and the russians, what he says is that the russian government used an intermediary, what they call a cutout, to do the leak. so for instance, you, tomorrow, could receive a manila envelope with trump's tax returns. it's newsworthy, you verify, do you withholding? so i think there is often a double standard. >> rose: does he verify? of course, he does. he's never released anything proven to be false. he has, though, which i would criticize him for and have criticized him for, is not

redact things that are personal information, for instance, that is not newsworthy. in the case of the d.n.c., he accomplished everything, and not everything was news woarlty. no doubt there was newsworthyy. dean bekay from the "new york times" made the argument that if a journalist has information that will inform the public and they can verify it's true, then you should accomplish it, which also doesn't negate the fact that we immediate to look really closely at what happened in this election and, as the government says, a state actor being the one that did the hack in deciding who to release to, i am disturbed by that. >> rose: does he have politics, political views in terms of any traditional way that we know? >> i mean, julian is -- i mean, founded the organization. he's actually very consistent. he's interested in accomplishing what he believes to be vital information from secretive institutions and organizations that control our lives. so that would be governments.

that would be corporations. that would be intelligence agencies. and he's not interested in picking political sides. would be very surprised if julian had a lot of information on trump and didn't release it. that just would not be -- it wouldn't align with who he is. >> rose: he was certainly no friend of hillary clinton. >> absolutely, yep. >> rose: this is where julian assange discussing the rape allegations against him with his lawyers which he describes -- go ahead. >> i'm just going to clarify the setup on this one. he's not really talking about the allegations themselves. he's talking about the sort of political context. >> rose: fair enough. roll tape. >> it's about you getting your mind into not using language that sounds hostile to women or to suggest that, in general, women are absolutely entitled to bring cases against men who rape. your position is i'm not one of them, you know. so you have to find the

language, you know, that helps you to explain that. other than sounding as if you're somebody who thinks that, you know, this is all a mad, feminist conspiracy, i don't think think that's helpful to you. >> not to say it publicly. i know but i would like to persuade you it isn't true as well. >> privately, it -- privately, it's a social democratic party plus general influence from the government. it's a thoroughly tawdry radical, feminist, political positioning thing. it's some stereotype. >> and you stumbled into this nest of -- >> yes. she started the lesbian night golf club in gottenberg. >> and people will say what does

setting up a lesbian flub got to do with the price of fish? >> she's in that circle. the fact somebody is a feminist and even a radical feminist. >> the police woman i have been running as a tag team. they go to corin -- >> don't use the language they're running as a tag team. >> in public. you -- >> rose: what do you make of that? >> well, you know, you asked p me earlier, what is good and his bad sides. i mean, here, he's absolutely maintained his innocence of these charges and there have been no charges filed. yet i find some of the descriptions of the allegations and describing terms of feminist political positioning thing, to me, that's disturbing. >> rose: you mean the argument he makes? >> yeah, that he thinks it's a conspiracy. i think that's hard to -- you know, that's disturbing, but those are more attitudes, and i

think one of the things that the film does touch on are the kind of questions around sexism and, you know, what you hear there, which is -- it's disturbing language to describe the women this the case. but, at the same time, it's important to just note that he maintains his innocence. >> rose: do you see him as a hero? >> i wouldn't describe him as a hero, but what i would say is i do believe that he's contributed, that the journalism that wikileaks has done has been very important. they've revealed very important things. for instance, the wars in iraq and afghanistan, i made a film about the war in iraq, and when they came forward with the video, the collateral murder video, to me this is something the public needs to see. that's valuable journalism, which, at the same time, i disagree with their choices not to redact and some of their -- yeah, some of the choices they make, which is, quite frankly,

why, when i was contacted which edward snowden and julian asked if i would also accomplish with wikileaks, i said no. i mean, we do disagree on some of these choices. >> did you change, over the time that you made this film, your opinion of julian assange? >> yeah, i changed my opinion and i also -- you know, the film began -- i began filming in 2011, and i had a feeling of optimism and hope that maybe we would have more aggressive journalism, which i think we need. i thought that the arab spring was something that was sort of democratizing, that it was sort of spreading and now fast forward to today, we're seeing sort of a different -- it's a really sort of, i think, a tragic moment both in terms of our sort of political reality and what's happening. >> rose: the question is did you change your opinion of him?

>> yeah. i mean, you know, over the course of this filming. >> rose: from what to what? over the course of the filmic, we've had a number of conflict. right now, actually, we're not speaking. >> rose: why are you not speaking? >> over conflicts that he wanted -- that i don't include things in the film, like the scene that you showed, and i wouldn't remove it, and he feels that, yeah, at the he feels my film threatens him, which i disagree with. so we're not on the best of terms right now. but i say that, and i also want to say i defend their work. >> rose: yeah. and i think that -- i defend their work and the right to publish, and i'm really concerned about this targeting that we're seeing right now in the government because, i mean, i have been on a watch list myself, you know, so i have been on the sort of receiving end of those kinds of government targeting, and, you know, really, it's a threat to the first amendment, to all

journalists. >> rose: the film "risk" is in theaters and will air on showtime plater this summer. thank you for coming. >> it's great to be here. >> rose: back in a moment. stay with us. >> rose: john wood is here, founder of "room to read." it is a nonprofit organization that promotes literacy in developing countries. wood started the nonprofit in 20000 after leaving a lucrative job at microsoft. "room to read" now reaches over 11 million students and just opened its 20,000th library this year. pleased to welcome john wood to this table. welcome. >> thank you. >> rose: tell me what "room to read" accomplishes. does it give people who would not have an opportunity to learn to read and to read, and you're growing up in a developing country, that's the key to the rest of your life. >> it is. i think so many kids are born under the system of the lottery of life. you're born in a low-income country to uneducated parents, you don't have a chance to get

educated. "room to read" believes the world starts by educating children. if you want to change things over a 20-year or 30-year timeo horizon, no better place to start than get the 5-year-olds and 6-year-olds in school, get them literate and benefit them the way you and i have. we intervene in two kinds of countries. number one, we try to get kids literate in grades one, two and three. over 100 million kids are not enrolled in school, 7 million illiterate and two-thirds girls and women, so we intervene early with literacy programs. in the girls e-program, we try to work in communities where girls are at risk of dropping out and not transitioning from primary to secondary school. we tray to make sure they get through secondary school to negotiate key life decisions as young adifficult. >> rose: what are you doing with syrian refugees?

>> we are launching models to work in jordan to help syrian refugee families and other families in the middle east including iraq where jordan has welcomed in so many refugees, the education system is very straingd, under resourced. in jordan today, many communities are teaching two shifts, a jordanian shift in the morning, a refugee shift in the afternoon. in a lot of refugees camp, there are search rare schools but noos comes taking place. so we're working with jordanian authors and artists and syrian authors and artists to produce high grade arabic language readers so the kids will have something positive in their life. our goal is to produce over half a million children's books this year alone to help kids throughout jordan. >> rose: there was a program called let girls learn initiative. >> yes. >> rose: what did it do? very much in line with what

"room to read" is trying to do, find girls in low-income countries can be the first in their family to finish secondary school. many times they are forced out of school by economic circumstances, convinced to get married early and have children early. what we are trying to do is work to make sure these girls are the first in their family to finish secondary school and go on to pigger things. 89% of the girls who finished "room to read" went on to full-time employment. they will be the change makers. like two generations, many women were the first to finish school. that's the tied to growth. >> rose: the stimulus to growth. >> yes. eevery additional year of education gets, her wage is increased by 15% to 20%. five extra years of education, her eventual wages will double. educated women get married later, fewer children, healthier families. most importantly, when women in

low-income countries earn a marginal dollar, they tend to spend it on their family, food, education, for the children. men are not as careful with the marginal dollar. when women get educated,ates spring board to societal change. >> rose: a comparison to "room to read" has eight times with what carnegie built with 20,000 supporters. you believe it's the biggest education movement around? >> we do, hum bring. there is still ways to. go when i quit microsoft and the founding team came together to start "room to read," we looked at carnegie, it's widely considered the most successful philanthropic investments in human history. ewe said why can't somebody do for the developing world what carnegie did for the u.s. and great britain. with 20,000 communities

benefiting, we're 8x karen question. 7 million people are illiterate in the world today. for an investment of $30,000 over four years, we can bring the library and literacy program and impact hundreds of kids in each of the communities. >> rose: tell me the story. i was a microsoft executive in st. 98, running marketing for asia parveg for microsoft, went to nepal to do an 18 track on a circuit and a hea headmaster shd me his school. it was hopeful but rather tha pect and sad because the kids didn't have works desks and not enough spots for the students. >> i said you have 400 students but no books in your library, why? he said in nepal, we're too poor to afford education. and until education we'll always remain poor. my thought was this can't be a hard problem to solve. i have to do something. the head master is an optimist and he said perhaps some day you will come back with books so i

left with a homework assignment. >> rose: that was a stimulus to do what you're doing with room to read. >> exactly. i went back a year later. my 73-year-old father was my right hand man, and we sat there talking. the kids had never seen brightly colored children's books before. it was a more pit, the kids were so excited. hi father said, you should be proud, you've helped a lot of kids. i said one library, ten, 100 is not enough. i said, microsoft will be a hobby. hobbies don't scale. the only way to scale is to devote yourself full time. i jumped out of the microsoft airplane and prayed my parachute would deploy successfully. >> rose: literacy is how big of a problem? >> 98% of the illiterate live in low-income countries. i think of literacy kind of like

the foundation, if you want to build a tall building, you have to have a deep foundation. so many kids in the developing world today don't get litter from a young age and that the we're proud to work in 25 communities. we have children accessing the libraries. that's where education starts. they get literate. become readers from a young age. you and i are a big reader. my hope is millions of kids inn low income countries will become readers from a young age. that to me is important because it's a hand up not a hand out. >> rose: what's interesting is because if you can read because of the internet your access to things to read in this age is so much greater than i have to certainly when i was growing up. >> yes. >> rose: i depended on books coming from a bookmobile, from the library in the town next door. now you go to the your computer

and you have access to all sorts of learning tools. >> yes, like you i grew up in a small town in pennsylvania, we had a library that launched me to being where i am today. >> rose: me, too. the librarian who ebefriended me became a heroine to me. >> we were only allowed to check out five books a week and i said that's an arbitrarily low limit and give me a wink and let me check extra books out of the library. i tried to convince my friends in silicon valley is if children are illiterate, that's putting the cart before the horse to give them games. we need solutions like this one to say let's not throw technology at the developing world, let's make sure the kids at a young age, 5, 6, 7, whether sam bodia or sri lanka, give them literacy and then they can

take advantage of technology. >> rose: in 2020 will be your 20th anniversary. >> yes. >> rose: you hope to have reached how many students? >> at least 15 million students by 2020 but i bet we'll go higher. we have the room to read accelerator, a program where we get requests from governments all over the world to say when can you come in. so room to read accelerator is our rapid deployment asset model. we're training local n.g.o.s and governments to take our models of publishing, library management, and research, so i think with the accelerator we can potentially reach millions more of additional children on top of our direct programs. >> rose: a remarkable program. people want to know more, go to your web site.

>> "room to read".org. >> rose: john wood, thank you for joining us. see you next time for more about this program and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

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

♪ announcer: a kqed television production. sbrocco: and everybody say, "opa!" all: opa!