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GWEN IFILL: We return again to the issue of sexual assault in the military, as yet another shoe drops at the Pentagon.

Margaret Warner has more.

MARGARET WARNER: The Army announced late yesterday that a sergeant who handled sexual assault cases at Fort Hood, Texas, is being criminally investigated on sex crime allegations. No charges have been filed.

In response, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered the Pentagon to retrain, re-credential and re-screen all military recruiters and sexual assault prevention officers. The latest revelation comes just 10 days after the Air Force's sexual assault prevention chief was arrested on charges of sexual battery. And a Pentagon survey last week estimated that 26,000 military members were sexually assaulted last year.

Joining me to discuss all this is Craig Whitlock of The Washington Post.

Craig, welcome back to the program.

CRAIG WHITLOCK, The Washington Post: Thank you.

MARGARET WARNER: So, first of all, the situation at Fort Hood. Tell us more about what is alleged to have happened, what he is alleged to have done.

CRAIG WHITLOCK: Well, as you say, no charges have been filed, but criminal investigators from the Army are looking into allegations that this sergeant committed sexual abuse involving multiple women.

And in one case, they're looking into allegations that he may be charged with pandering. And that's military crime-speak for essentially organizing prostitution. So I think this is a case that not only is it bad enough and shocking enough that a sexual prevention officer was involved in this kind of crime, but I think people on Capitol Hill, lawmakers, are really baffled by this, that someone could be placed in the kind of position that he was.

MARGARET WARNER: And, of course, the Air Force colonel last week was also in this field. But explain Secretary Hagel's response yesterday, even though there has been a sort of steady drip-drip with these cases. Why did he respond now the way he did with this new program?

CRAIG WHITLOCK: Well, I think he -- the Pentagon is scrambling to figure out how it should respond. They're realizing this is a systemic problem, not an isolated case by case, that they have a real difficulty here in prosecuting, identifying sexual assault cases, handling victims, making people feel comfortable with reporting these sort of crimes.

So what he did last night is he announced that the Pentagon is going to retrain, re-screen, re-credential all 9,000 sexual assault prevention officers in the military, as well as over 20,000 military recruiters across the country. And I think the attempt there is to answer -- make sure no other people with problematic backgrounds are in those jobs.

MARGARET WARNER: Well, and you reported, did you not, earlier this week that military recruiters, there have been some cases involving them with very young women.

CRAIG WHITLOCK: That's right, in a number of cases this year.

There was a case in Maryland where an Army recruiter was involved in a murder/suicide with a young woman he was recruiting her for the Army. There was a case in Alaska just this month where someone was found guilty, and a Marine jury gave him no jail time. And the Pentagon doesn't track these cases in terms of statistics, so they're scrambling there.

MARGARET WARNER: So, describe the pressure you talked about that Secretary Hagel is under from the Hill and the outrage and where that may be -- where that's leading potentially.

CRAIG WHITLOCK: Well, lawmakers have been expressing concerns about sex crimes in the military for a number of years, but these cases, these reports have really fueled their concerns.

And what I think we're pretty certainly going see is legislative change. The Pentagon has always resisted any change to military law that would take power away from commanders to investigate or oversee these cases. But there's a powerful push on the Hill, particularly among female lawmakers, to make some real changes to military law in that regard.

MARGARET WARNER: Like Sen. Gillibrand.

Why -- why are military commanders, and all the way up, I gather, into the Pentagon, so resistant to the idea of transferring, giving the authority to prosecute these cases to military lawyers?

CRAIG WHITLOCK: Well, that's a really good question, but to answer that, you sort of have to understand military culture a bit.

The commanders have the power and authority over everything within their units. And they're charged with this very important responsibility of taking care of their people, of overseeing good order and discipline. To take that power away from military commanders, in essence, is a way of saying they were unable to handle this problem, that they can't be trusted with that.

And I think a lot of them, particularly the honorable ones, are uncomfortable with that. Now, there are others who say, yes, this is a problem. We're not legally trained. We're not judges, that we should hand this off to legal professionals, and that would save them a lot of headaches. And that's the battle we're seeing right now on Capitol Hill.

MARGARET WARNER: And where is Secretary Hagel on this? I noticed that his spokesman wrote a letter to The New York Times last week disputing the way Secretary Hagel's views were characterized.

CRAIG WHITLOCK: Well, that's right.

But I think his views have changed on this chain of command, whether commanders should have the ultimate responsibility for these cases or not. I was there when Hagel was asked last week at a press conference, “do you support this or not?” And he was pretty direct in saying, no, we don't want to take this responsibility away from commanders.

In just a matter of days, they backed off that. Now, Sen. Gillibrand told me she talked to Hagel after that and she really put the screws to him, and she said that, well, he's listening, he's keeping an open mind. So I think we are seeing some changes in the Pentagon's receptiveness to reform.

MARGARET WARNER: Well, Craig Whitlock of The Washington Post, thank you.

CRAIG WHITLOCK: Sure thing.

Champion of Military Sexual Assault Awareness Questions if Change Is Possible

Thu, 09 May 2013 17:43:00 EDT

Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif. Photo by Chris Maddaloni/ CQ Roll Call.

Tuesday should have been a good day for Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif. Her signature issue in Congress -- reducing sexual assaults in the U.S. military -- had just been forcefully endorsed by President Barack Obama, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.

But Speier was not optimistic that major change is coming.

"We are building momentum and I want to believe this is a tipping point," Speier told me from Capitol Hill that afternoon. "But I guess I've been around politics for too long."'

The president, Hagel and Levin spoke out after front-page treatment of the longstanding and intractable problem of sexual harassment and attacks on women and men in the military services by their fellow service members.

On Tuesday, the Defense Department released a survey that said the problem was getting worse. Reports of unwanted sexual contact rose by more than 35 percent from 2010 to 2012, to an estimated 26,000 incidents.

The survey estimated 12,100 of the 203,000 active duty women and 13,900 of 1.2 million men on active duty were sexually assaulted. But fewer than 3,400 incidents were reported to the military chain of command.

And that, says Speier, is the problem -- commanding officers who have sole responsibility to take action against perpetrators often don't. And victims know it.

"It's a closed universe. There is a mentality of 'Oh, boys will be boys.' The lack of prosecutions and convictions sends a message to the victims of 'Oh, don't bother because you're not going to get the justice you deserve,' and to the perpetrator, that as long as you're a good soldier, you've got a free pass," Speier told the NewsHour.

"Imagine an environment where if you've got good military character -- that's the term of art used -- if you are what's called a water-walker, that's a mitigating factor in terms of being punished for any crime," she said.

Speier says it's now clear commanders can't police their own ranks.

"The time is now. Stop tinkering around the edges. Stop with the nice talk about 'zero tolerance.' Stop with the ask-her-was-she-sober type of training and do what has been done in other countries that we mimic," Speier said.

"Our [military justice system] is based on the British system and in the British system and Australia and in Canada, they have taken the reporting out of the chain of command and placed it in a separate office within the military that evaluates whether or not there's evidence to move forward and prosecute the case."

The Pentagon report on sexual assaults set off a flurry of declarations from members of Congress on both sides of the Capitol and from both parties to push the military to fulfill its promises -- also contained in the report -- to crack down.

Speir on Thursday attended a bipartisan White House meeting on the issue with members of Congress and top presidential aide Valerie Jarrett, her office said.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One that the meeting "reflects the level of concern that you heard from the president the other day at his press conference with the president of South Korea."

"He has zero tolerance for sexual assault in the military and he was clear that as commander in chief, he believes that anyone who engages in sexual assault is dishonoring the uniform that they wear," Carney said.

But neither the president, the defense secretary nor any of the top military policy leaders in Congress has endorsed the call by Speier and fellow Democrat Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York for a separate investigative and prosecutorial body within the military. And Speier admits it's a difficult sell.

"This is going to be a sea change. This is going to require the military to internally do some soul-searching and it's going to require a whole conduct shift. And that's not easy," she said.

And she says she's also seen the intensity of members wane before.

"You know, there's so many issues that are bombarding members. This is an issue today. There'll be another issue tomorrow. We all suffer from A.D.D.," said Speier. "So I don't know if we can count on it. But that's why I've been beating this drum. I've talked about this issue for two years now."

The next big test begins next week when Gillibrand introduces her bill to take sexual assault adjudication and all serious crime out of the hands of unit commanders.

Tune in to the NewsHour in the coming weeks for a full report on the issue of sexual assault in the military and the legislative push to address it.

Report on Military's Growing Number of Sexual Assaults Draws Presidential Rebuke

Tue, 07 May 2013 18:02:00 EDT

RAY SUAREZ: The problem of sexual assaults in the nation's armed forces is getting worse, and maybe much worse. The issue drew the national spotlight today and a presidential rebuke.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We're not going to tolerate this stuff, and there will be accountability.

RAY SUAREZ: The news of growing sexual assaults in the military raised the president's hackles at a news conference with the president of South Korea.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Let's start with the principle that sexual assault is an outrage. It is a crime. That's true for society at large, and if it's happening inside our military, then whoever carries it out is betraying the uniform that they're wearing.

RAY SUAREZ: Mr. Obama spoke as an annual Pentagon study reported sexual assaults in the military rose from just under 3,300 in 2012 to nearly 3,400 last year. But it also found that up to 26,000 cases went unreported.

At a Senate hearing this morning, the Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Mark Welsh, struck sparks with New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, suggesting it's not always a commander's fault if victims don't come forward.

GEN. MARK WELSH, U.S. Air Force: The things that cause people to not report are -- primarily are really not chain of command. It's: I don't want my family to know. I don't want my spouse to know or my boyfriend or girlfriend to know. I'm embarrassed that I'm in this situation.

It's the self-blame that comes with the crime. That is overridingly on surveys over the years the reasons that most victims don't report. And I don't think it's any different in the military. Prosecution rates in the Air Force for this crime ...

SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, D-N.Y.: I think it's very different in the military. I think you're precisely wrong about that. Everything is about the chain of command.

RAY SUAREZ: The president said today the military has to exponentially increase its efforts to address the problem. And Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced he's issuing new orders to change the culture in the ranks.

DEFENSE SECRETARY CHUCK HAGEL, United States: Together, everyone in this department at every level of command will continue to work together everyday to establish an environment of dignity and respect, where sexual assault is not tolerated, condoned or ignored.

RAY SUAREZ: The Pentagon report came just days Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski, who runs the Air Force unit on sexual assault, was himself arrested for allegedly groping a woman. And, in February, Air Force Lt. Gen. Susan Helms overturned a captain's conviction on aggravated sexual assault.

Now Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill is holding up Helms' nomination for vice chair of the U.S. Space Command. She spoke at today's hearing.

SEN. CLAIRE MCCASKILL, D-Mo.: The general said, no, no, we believe the member of the military. That is the crux of the problem here, because if a victim does not believe that the system is capable of believing her, there's no point in risking your entire career.

RAY SUAREZ: In response, lawmakers are pursuing multiple kinds of legislation on the problem. One could strip commanding officers of their ability to reverse convictions.

I'm joined now by Mark Thompson, the Washington deputy bureau chief and national security correspondent for TIME and writer of the Battleland blog.

And, Mark, you have seen the reports. You have seen the Pentagon's self-reporting on this. Does that 26,000 unreported assaults a year look like a solid number? Where does it come from?

MARK THOMPSON, TIME: Well, it's an extrapolated number, Ray, from anonymous phone surveys done by the Pentagon of military people. And so it's sort of squishy to begin with.

What's particularly striking about the number, of course, is from 2010 to 2012, that number grew by 35 percent, whereas the hard number, the number of cases that actually were brought forward by people complaining about sexual assaults in the military only went up by roughly six percent from 3,200 to 3,400.

So even though they are getting more reports, those that are unreported are going up even faster.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, a number of unreported cases nine times larger than the number of reported cases ...

MARK THOMPSON: Right.

RAY SUAREZ: ... is that bigger than the service chiefs even realized at first?

MARK THOMPSON: Well, I think, number one, it is bigger than what you see in the civilian world, where the proportion of reported is an order or two bigger than what you see in the military.

But this is not a new problem. This is a longstanding problem. I was on this show 16 years ago talking about it. It remains a problem, what's happening. You have got about 14 percent of the military in uniform that are women, and all of a sudden, with these female senators, several of which we just saw, this is not being able to be ignored by the chiefs, the secretary of defense or anybody else.

It seems like we may have reached a turning point this weekend with the arrest of this Air Force officer.

RAY SUAREZ: Today, at the news conference at the Pentagon, the general in charge of overseeing the management of this problem flipped this on its head in a way and said that part of it is that there's more reporting.

MARK THOMPSON: Yes, I think ...

RAY SUAREZ: So, this is good news, that they're changing the culture.

MARK THOMPSON: Yes, to go back to what I just said, the math shows that it's going up faster in the unreported realm than in the reported realm.

We see this throughout the military whenever there's a bad problem, be it mental health issues, PTSD, anything that has to be self-reported. Whenever the numbers go up, the Pentagon is always very quick to say, it's because we have removed stigma, we have put signs all over the bases and posts encouraging people to come forward.

And I think there is some truth to that, but essentially it remains a huge problem and they're just getting at a bit of it by reducing the stigma.

RAY SUAREZ: And, at the same time, the arrest of the Air Force's senior officer in charge of getting those numbers down, arrested himself during an accused sexual assault.

MARK THOMPSON: Yes, I mean, that is the problem. That's what stunned everybody I spoke to at the Pentagon over the last couple of days.

I mean, a couple of things about Lt. Col. Krusinski's case. He was picked for that job specifically. And people I talk to suggest, well, he couldn't have been -- you know if someone is right for such a sensitive post. The Air Force put him in that post. A lot of people are asking questions about that now.

And we're just going to have to -- the Air Force has asked to take this case away from Arlington County, which is where the Pentagon is located, and prosecute it on their own. We will learn what happens on that score come Thursday.

RAY SUAREZ: You mentioned the female senators. There are also more members of Congress willing to push back on this issue, including a legislative attempt to take the adjudication of these issues out of the chain of the command. What does the Pentagon say in response?

MARK THOMPSON: Well, Sec. Hagel was asked about that today. He doesn't like it. He wants it to stay within the chain of command.

The advocates of change are saying, now, listen, we're not going to take it out of the Pentagon. We're going to keep it in the Pentagon, but it is going to be staffed, for lack of a better word, by a professional force of military sexual trauma advocates, who will be fair, won't be affected, because they won't be in the chain of command of the victim or the accused.

And victims there, advocates believe, will be able to get a fairer shot at their day in court.

RAY SUAREZ: How is this handled in other country's militaries, where they have an even higher percentage of women in the ranks?

MARK THOMPSON: Yes. It doesn't -- it seems to be a particularly -- particularly nagging problem in the U.S. military, just as gays in the military were a big problem here, and it wasn't a problem anywhere else.

I don't know if it's something in the American psyche or something in the American military, but it's a particular combination that has generated this for a long time.

RAY SUAREZ: Mark Thompson, thanks a lot for being with us.

MARK THOMPSON: You bet.

The True Un-Hollywood Story of a Sisterhood's Hunt for Bin Laden

Wed, 01 May 2013 15:34:00 EDT

The HBO documentary "Manhunt" details the grueling work by CIA agents in the search and capture of Osama bin Laden. Photo courtesy of HBO

The second anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death brings a revealing new account of what it took to get him. The HBO documentary "Manhunt" by filmmaker Greg Barker, based on the book by journalist Peter Bergen, joins a two-year blizzard of books and films, each purporting to tell the inside story of the hunt for the elusive terrorist and the al-Qaida network he built.

It's a vivid contrast to the Hollywoodized account in "Zero Dark Thirty," the controversial film by Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow. "Zero Dark Thirty" devotes its first third to re-enacting the interrogations of detainees, some using brutal methods like waterboarding, and turns over the last third on a heart-stopping dramatization of the SEAL raid on the Abbottabad compound. (The film strongly suggested that brutal interrogation of detainees produced the crucial links that nailed bin Laden.) Given short shrift was the painstaking, hard-to-dramatize work that linked the two.

That's where "Manhunt" comes in. It lays out for the first time the unsexy work of uncovering the al-Qaida network and bin Laden's role, not impressionistically as "Zero Dark Thirty" does, but in all its painstaking detail -- how beginning nearly a decade before 9/11, a group of CIA analysts assembled, sifted, plotted and graphed a network of individuals, communications, transactions and events that they ultimately came to identify as al-Qaida.

Most remarkably, it tells the story not through actors playing composite characters but through narratives and testimonies from the actual people involved -- from formerly faceless CIA analysts, many of them women, to plainspoken field operatives to then-deputy CIA director John McLaughlin.

Central to the tale is the collective story of six women CIA analysts, informally known as "The Sisterhood," who spent much of the 90's assembling a picture of the matrix that was al-Qaida. Curly-haired Cindy Storer played a crucial role in recognizing that seemingly unrelated attacks around the world, from the Black Hawk Down episode in Somalia to the East Africa bombings to the USS Cole, were in fact the work of a single organization named al-Qaida, headed by the Saudi financier and former anti-Soviet mujahedeen leader in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden.

"Zero Dark Thirty" gave a nod to the importance of the female analysts too, but rolled them into one fictionalized character, the bold, beautiful, redhead Maya, who seemed to spend as much time witnessing brutal interrogations at CIA black sites in the field as she did in front of a computer screen. In real life, as we see in "Manhunt," these brilliant analysts looked like your neighbors, teachers or office workers, wrestling with the difficulties of the task not in staccato confrontations with male colleagues, but cooped up in a warren of windowless offices, surrounded by white boards, photographs, flow charts and gruesome al-Qaida recruiting videos, and sharing outsized bottles of Tums. Their work was dissed by others in the agency. Storer was counseled that she was spending too much time working on bin Laden. "They said we were obsessed crusaders, overly emotional, using all those women stereotypes," she says in the film.

When 9/11 hit, guilt set in, but also rage at critics who blamed 9/11 on "intelligence failures" despite the repeated CIA warnings to the White House through 2001 that a huge attack on U.S. soil was in the offing. "People say, 'Why didn't you connect the dots?'" Storer says. "Well, because the whole page is black!"

"Something that people don't fully grasp is how alone the CIA felt in this period of time," says former deputy director McLaughlin. Because the CIA had the deepest knowledge of al-Qaida, "the feeling all of us had was this is on our shoulders -- to prevent this from every happening again."

So all these analysts and operatives turned their skills to targeting specific individuals, to be killed or captured for often brutal interrogations. Unprecedented collaboration with the U.S. military brought successes, rounding up or killing major al-Qaida figures worldwide. There are many books describing this operational marriage, from Gen. Stanley McChrystal's memoir "My Share of the Task" to Mark Mazzetti's "The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth."

But "Manhunt" shows its human toll. CIA analyst-turned-targeter Nada Bakos describes what it was like to spend years in Iraq tracking a "monster," the chief of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al Karkawi. "I was thinking about him 24/7 and it just wasn't pleasant after a while." Her efforts paid off with his killing by a US airstrike in 2006. "You definitely need to know what your moral center is in order to be able to do that job," she says. "My job was to hunt a person down to capture or kill. I had to be okay with that."

Bakos's major coup was leading the team that nabbed al-Qaida emissary Hassan Ghul in Iraq. He revealed that bin Laden relied on a single courier for all his communications, and what his full pseudonym was. That was the breakthrough in the CIA's hunt for bin Laden, refocusing the agency on al-Qaida's courier network.

Whether coercive interrogation techniques are necessary or effective -- the controversy in which "Zero Dark Thirty" clearly takes a stand -- is openly debated by some of the actual players in "Manhunt," but ultimately left unresolved. But the moral dimensions of the issue are clear. "We knew Americans would find out at some point about everything we were up to. There were no illusions," says former Counterterrorism Center deputy chief Phillip Mudd "I understand people are uncomfortable with this, but the options we had were not very good ... There are philosophical debates you can have, but at the end of the day, the question is: Are you gonna move or not? Yes or no? Go or no go? That's it."

Another unresolved question is posed by McChrystal, who as commander of Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq pioneered the partnership of analysts and door-kickers. "The really key part is not how to do these operations. The thing to understand is why are the people we are fighting doing what they're doing? Why is the enemy the enemy? If you don't understand why they're doing it, it's very difficult to stop it." That's a quandary for us all to ponder.

Book Examines the Blurring Line Between Soldiers and Spies Since 9/11 Attacks

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 18:41:00 EDT

GWEN IFILL: Finally tonight, a new book about a major change in the way America fights.

The attacks of September 11^th sparked a revolution of sorts at the Central Intelligence Agency, transforming it from an operation focused on stealing secrets to something closer to a paramilitary organization focused on hunting down and killing terrorists.

The Department of Defense has evolved as well, beefing up its global intelligence gathering capabilities, and at times conducting missions that were previously done by the spies of the CIA.

New York Times national security correspondent Mark Mazzetti tracks all this in "The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth."

Margaret Warner sat down with him recently, and began by asking when it first became apparent that the line between spies and soldiers had blurred.

MARK MAZZETTI, "The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth": I started covering the military just shortly before the September 11^th attacks.

And in the months and years afterwards, what -- a lot of what I was reporting on was these efforts by Donald Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, to basically get soldiers outside of the declared war zones, so basically send them around the world.

And that meant changing not only the authorities that the Pentagon had to do that, but to build the budgets and build the capabilities of special operations troops. And Rumsfeld really was furious at the Pentagon he inherited that it wasn't equipped to fight this kind of war.

And so he was trying to push them more and more into intelligence gathering, manhunting. And there are some now famous memos that Rumsfeld wrote that sort of expressed his concern about these things. And then what we saw with the CIA was weak after 9/11. The -- President Bush gave the CIA lethal authority to capture and kill al-Qaida leaders, which is something it hadn't had for decades.

And so they become much more into the killing business and the military business.

MARGARET WARNER: More operational.

Now when did the CIA -- they have started out capturing and interrogating terror suspects in these secret sites. When did they shift their focus and sort of embrace the policy of targeting and killing them instead?

MARK MAZZETTI: There's a critical moment that I write about in 2004 when the CIA inspector general, John Helgerson, writes a pretty devastating report about the abuses in the CIA prisons.

And really it had this effect not only within the agency, but in the Bush administration. And, ultimately Congress, and, as we all know, the American public started learning the details. The first drone strike in Pakistan took place a month after that report.

Now, I don't want to draw too direct a line and say one absolutely led to another, but there's no question that this report, this internal report, led to -- helped lead to a new direction for the CIA from capturing to killing.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, you write about this, but briefly describe, what sort of debate was there within either the agency or the administration about the morality and legality of using drones to essentially carry out remote-control assassinations?

MARK MAZZETTI: You had a whole generation of CIA officers who had come in to the agency after the 1970s Church Committee investigations, which many people will remember sort of aired all the dirty laundry about assassination attempts, coup attempts in the early days of the CIA.

So many thought the CIA shouldn't be doing this in terms of handling armed drones. Then, of course, 9/11 happens. President Bush gives the lethal authorities. And those concerns that played out before 9/11 were quickly swept aside.

And it -- but it did take some time for the CIA really to escalate its killing operations even after the 9/11 attacks. Some of it was because, as we said, there was this interrogation focus, but it was also, their intelligence wasn't particularly good in order to do these drone strikes. They had to broker secret deals with these countries in order to allow them to have the strikes.

And then finally the big moment was, at the end of the Bush administration, President Bush decides that he's going to authorize the CIA to do drone strikes in Pakistan unilaterally, without even telling the Pakistanis, because he had reached a point of frustration.

MARGARET WARNER: You write about a number of the downsides, and one of the most important ones you found was that it -- all this focus on targeting, finding specific terrorists took them away from the traditional work, in which they might come to, say, understand developments throughout the Muslim world, let's say the Arab spring, for example, which the intelligence agencies missed.

MARK MAZZETTI: When the Arab spring happened, after the initial spark that happened in Tunisia that set up the Tunisian revolt, you had these cascading revolutions in Egypt, in Libya.

And there was a lot of concern in the administration that the agency was a step behind all along the way. And one of the things I write about in the book is that when you're doing manhunting and you're doing counterterrorism, you're necessarily going to be being very close with foreign spy services. They're going to help you find terror leaders or militants.

So you’re close with the Libyans and you're close with the Egyptians. But those are the last people who are going to tell you that there's a revolution on its way in the country. Right? And so ...

MARGARET WARNER: Even if they know it. Sometimes, they miss it.

MARK MAZZETTI: Even if they know it, they might not tell the CIA.

So the question was how much the CIA or other intel agencies didn't have its ear to the ground to predict or at least to update these revolts as they were happening.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, the new director of the CIA, John Brennan, seemed to indicate at his hearing that he wanted to dial back on the drone -- having the agency in the drone attack business. Do you think there is going to be a shift, and, if so, why?

MARK MAZZETTI: Well, I think that the pressure is increasing on President Obama to bring more transparency to these operations.

They remain in secret. And it's amazing that even some members of the Intelligence Committees who have access to the highest-classification information in the U.S. government, they realized during the Brennan hearings that they didn't have everything, and that they were pushing for more information.

So there's pressure to at least bring more transparency. And Brennan has said that there is -- there are functions the CIA is currently doing that it probably shouldn't be doing. I think that this is going to be something that takes time, though, that not -- that the CIA wouldn't necessarily entirely get out of the targeted killing business.

It may give up aspects of it. And then the question is, well, how long does it really take the agency to be moving back in the other -- the other direction? It could take years. But there's no question that the secrecy of all this is something that I don't think President Obama and the Obama administration is going to be able to maintain for very long.

MARGARET WARNER: Mark Mazzetti, thank you for joining us. And I look forward to continuing our conversation about "The Way of the Knife" online.

MARK MAZZETTI: Thanks very much.

GWEN IFILL: As Margaret mentioned, there is more of their conversation online, and you can find that on The Rundown.

'The Way of the Knife' Examines Conflict Between CIA, Pentagon

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 17:11:00 EDT

[ DUE TO RIGHTS RESTRICTIONS, VIDEO IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE ]'

PBS NewsHour senior correspondent Margaret Warner talks to Pulitzer Prize winning author Mark Mazzetti on his new book "The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth." Mazzetti talks about the competition between the CIA and the Pentagon in the years following 9/11 as the global manhunt for terrorists intensified.

Slide Show: Inside Guantanamo's Prison

Gitmo by the Numbers

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:20:00 EDT

View Slide Show

Take a tour of the communal-living detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.

The prison at Guantanamo Bay holds 166 detainees captured and transferred to Cuba in coordination with U.S. counterterrorism operations abroad.

Recently, more than half of the detainees have gone on hunger strikes protesting their living conditions and indefinite containment.

How big is the place and how long are inmates closed in their cells? We have some stats:

4:
Number of hours (midnight to 4 a.m.) that detainees in the complaint part of the camp are locked in their individual cells. They can move around the communal areas during all other hours.

20:
Number of detainees who first arrived at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay on Jan. 11, 2002. The Bush administration established the detention facility to hold terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

45:
Square mileage of the U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay that houses the detention camps, which include separate facilities ranging from communal living to maximum security.

166:
Number of detainees held in Guantanamo as of today's date.

604:
Number of detainees that have been transferred from the facility over the years.

779:
Number of secret files on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay that the website WikiLeaks made public in 2011. The New York Times lists them all here.

1903:
Year that Cuba and the United States signed a lease agreement in which Cuba maintained ultimate sovereignty over Guantanamo Bay but gave the United States jurisdiction and control over the area for a coaling station and naval purposes. The lease is controversial in Cuba, and the country's leader Fidel Castro has refused to cash any of the rental payments from the United States, though one check was accidentally cashed.

2009:
The year President Obama said he would close the detention facility in a year and move prisoners to a Thomson, Ill., facility. But various statutes restricted the transfer of detainees, so the prison at Guantanamo Bay remained open. The Government Accountability Office released a report in November 2012 on the capability of U.S. facilities to house Guantanamo detainees in case the restrictions were lifted.

Related Resources:

Does Force-feeding Guantanamo Prisoners on Hunger Strike Violate Their Rights?

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Does Force-feeding Guantanamo Prisoners on Hunger Strike Violate Their Rights?

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 18:29:00 EDT

RAY SUAREZ: For more on the hunger strike, I'm joined by a reporter who's logged more hours in Guantanamo than any other journalist, Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald.

Carol, welcome.

More than a dozen are now being force-fed. How is the determination made which prisoners are restrained and fed by force?

CAROL ROSENBERG, Miami Herald: The military says they have a calculus that looks at how much weight has been lost, how much malnutrition exists in an individual, and basically how sick they are.

They can skip meals for days on end, but there's a point at which when their weight drops down to a certain percentage below healthy body weight that they start the force-feeding.

RAY SUAREZ: Of the scores who are on hunger strike, how long have the longest prisoners been denying themselves food?

CAROL ROSENBERG: Well, Ray, there's one man down there who has been doing this hunger strike since about 2005.

He's been living off these tube-feedings for years and years. This has been a singular protest. What's going on now is that this current hunger striker -- hunger strike started probably in February, when the detainees say that they had a particularly aggressive search by the guards in which they perceived that the guards were having the linguists inspect their Korans, which apparently just uncorked all sorts of frustration and led to this latest hunger strike.

RAY SUAREZ: Are there in the international treaties that govern the way prisoners are treated areas that -- parts, chapters, whatever, that cover force-feeding?

CAROL ROSENBERG: Well, you know, the head of the International Red Cross tells us that they oppose force-feeding, that actually prisoners do have the right to a certain measure of self-determination. And one of the things that they can do is choose not to eat.

The Pentagon has a different policy. And what they say is that they have developed these force-feeding protocols from the Federal Bureau of Prisons years ago when they were first confronted with the hunger strikes. So there are international human rights and medical organizations that say what the U.S. is doing down there, feeding them twice a day with these tubes tethered up their nose, down the back of their throat and into their stomach, a can of Ensure twice a day, there are organizations that say this is wrong, that they should be allowed to choose to starve to death if they want to.

RAY SUAREZ: Recently, there was a raid in the prison itself. What were the conditions that prevailed in the so-called communal areas? What had the authorities at Guantanamo allowed life to become for many of the detainees?

CAROL ROSENBERG: This raid took place in the showcase communal prison, camp six. This was a place where -- which was closest to a POW camp than anything that had ever existed at Guantanamo.

Detainees lived in groups of 10, 12, maybe 18 at a time. They ate together at picnic tables. They prayed together. They were able to sit around and watch television together. They had free movement from inside the building where the picnic tables were out to enclosed recreation yards outside. So this was a fair amount of enclosed freedom with the guards on the outside looking in.

They would watch through cameras, monitors and they would watch from outside the fences, some of them which were actual fences. And what we were told when we went down there last week is that the detainees began to defy their guards in many, many ways over the months.

Among other things, I was told last week, to my surprise -- because I had been there the month before -- some of the prisoners had taken sticks and were poking the guards through the fences. You know, they had brooms there which they could use to sweep out their cells, so they apparently took these broom sticks and were poking the guards and provoking them.

They refused to eat. They refused to allow the food carts to come inside these communal areas. They controlled what came in and went out. And, most importantly, they took old cereal boxes and they covered up the cameras in their individual cells. And this was the thing that most concerned the Pentagon and the military that was running the place.

If they couldn't look inside individual cells, if they couldn't keep an eye on detainees in the corners of these collective areas, they feared that somebody would try to suicide or that somebody was starving himself and wasting away, and that they couldn't keep eyes on him to realize that they had to force-feed him.

So they made a decision. After several months of this kind of defiance of the rules, they went in on April 13^th right before dawn with these, frankly, strike forces. There -- two of the teams had shotguns with rubber pellets. They all had shields and they had helmets. And they charged inside the recreation yards, where according to the military they might some resistance.

It wasn't long. And they described injuries to both sides that were not serious, but people on both sides got hurt. And the guard force came in and pushed each one into individual cells. And they are now in lockdown. They are now inside these roughly 8-by-12 cells up to 22 hours a day being moved and shackled from these cells to small recreation yards, being moved from these cells to showers.

They have lost the ability to control their lives inside these communal blocks. And they're in what they call lockdown. It's a very different Guantanamo than the one we had seen throughout much of the Obama administration. This is much more of a doctrine of keeping people in individual cells, similar to what went on during the Bush years.

RAY SUAREZ: Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald, thanks for joining us.

CAROL ROSENBERG: Thank you, Ray.

JEFFREY BROWN: Online later tonight, you can see additional excerpts from Ray's interview with Carol Rosenberg, including more on those 86 detainees cleared for release who remain at Guantanamo.

Guantanamo Bay Hunger Strike Grows as More Than Half of Prisoners Refuse Food

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 18:26:00 EDT

JEFFREY BROWN: And we turn now to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where a protest by prisoners continues to grow.

Ray Suarez reports.

RAY SUAREZ: More than half the detainees at the Guantanamo prison are now on hunger strike. Government figures disclosed this weekend show 84 of the 166 captives at the facility are now participating. A smaller number began the protest in early February. They objected to their living conditions and to alleged mishandling of the Koran by military guards.

They also cited the legal limbo many have been held in for a decade or more, not charged with crimes or placed on trial. On April 13^th, there was a brief, violent confrontation. The military said guards raided a communal area to uncover security cameras and windows that had been shrouded for weeks.

COL. JOHN BOGDAN, COMMANDER, Guantanamo Bay Joint Detention Group: We were trying to be patient and work with them, give them the opportunity to comply. We hit the point where, you know, I felt we were accepting too much risk and it was time to take action.

RAY SUAREZ: The guards say the prisoners attacked them with homemade weapons. There were no reported serious injuries, but the prison was put on lockdown, and the number of hunger strikers skyrocketed; 16 are being force-fed, with tubes inserted through the nose and into the stomach. They are typically shackled in chairs like this for the procedure.

An American Naval medical officer described the process in 2009.

MAN: These are the feeding tubes that we use whenever it is determined at a very high level that somebody has reached that point in the hunger striking. Everyone is allowed to hunger strike; that is their right to protest. But if somebody gets to that point where they need additional medical care or it's reached the point where it's threatening their life, that's where the decision is made way above me to step in.

RAY SUAREZ: Among those being force-fed is Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel of Yemen. In a recent New York Times op-ed transmitted to his lawyers through an interpreter, he wrote: "I've been detained at Guantanamo for 11 years and three months. I have never been charged with any crime. I have never received a trial."

In all, 86 men remain at Guantanamo who have been cleared for release from the facility, 56 without restrictions, another 30 with conditions, all this despite the fact President Obama signed an executive order to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, more than four years ago.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: And promptly to close the detention facility at Guantanamo.

RAY SUAREZ: But Congress has blocked the transfer of any detainees to the mainland U.S. And some, like the Yemeni Moqbel, are men without countries. Their native nations have refused to take them back.

Several high-level al-Qaida detainees, like 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, are among the few facing military trial at the prison.

How Are Drones Used in the U.S.?

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 09:00:00 EDT

An Air 2 Air Ltd. Draganflyer Helicopter Base Unit camera holder is exhibited at an international airshow in Farnborough, U.K., on July 22, 2010. Photo by Simon Dawson/ Bloomberg via Getty Images.

The drone debate usually centers around U.S. use of the unmanned aircraft in other countries, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, to target terrorists. But how are drones used in the United States and how far are we from miniature helicopters flying up to our windows and peeking in?

The answer isn't easy. The technology for such drones currently exists, but other factors come into play, including the costs of operating the flying machines and the public's acceptance of their use.

Drones are remotely piloted aircraft that can be the size of a Boeing 737 or as small as a magazine. They're generally used for the three Ds: dull, dirty or dangerous missions, said Peter Singer, director of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at the Brookings Institution.

Drones can fly for long durations and in inhospitable environments. They can fly into a hurricane to measure its force or into a disaster area like the one left behind after the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan triggered by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

People can fly model airplanes without restriction, but it is illegal to operate a drone as a civilian above 400 feet and beyond line of sight for any commercial reason unless they have received permission from the Federal Aviation Administration.

The FAA issues "certificates of authorization" to public entities, such as NASA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other federal agencies, police departments and universities. In anticipation of growing drone use, Congress has tasked the FAA to figure out by 2015 how civilians can use drones beyond the airspace restrictions and licensing requirements.

Eighty-one public entities have applied for the special certification, according to FAA records obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. (See the list or find the applicants on a map.)

A Predator drone operated by the U.S. Office of Air and Marine undergoes a maintenance check before its surveillance flight near the Mexican border on March 7 from Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista, Ariz. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images.

So how are drones used once they're certified? Here are some examples:

The Department of Homeland Security flies Predators, which are about the size of a Cessna airplane, back and forth along the U.S. border to monitor for people crossing illegally.

For fighting wildfires, NASA and the Forest Service tested using a Predator to find and map forest fires in California.

Universities have drone programs, not just to learn how to build and maintain them, but also to train on their various uses.

Some police departments are testing them for uses such as photographing accident sites and finding criminal suspects.

"The way the police use [unmanned aircraft] is an interesting question moving forward," said Singer. "Are these just like the way police have traditionally used airplanes and helicopters, or something different? Do you have a large system that flies above a city, or tiny systems that you pack into the trunk of a police car" and deploy to track down fleeing suspects?

The American Civil Liberties Union raised some red flags over the use of drones in a December 2011 report. The group expressed concerns over the potential invasion of privacy and about "mission creep" -- things like drones being used to fire tear gas at protesters.

Some municipalities, such as Charlottesville, Va., have restricted drone use in law enforcement, and the Seattle Police Department agreed to return its two unused drones because of the public outcry, reported the New York Times.

What's happening now is akin to the 1980s when people were figuring out how computers could work to the public's advantage and be used for things besides as giant calculators, said Singer. "Now, you're talking about a computer that can essentially get up and fly and walk," and all the privacy implications that go with it.

Although ideas about privacy seem to be loosening with each new generation -- witness the growing posting of personal photos and videos online, Singer noted -- there's still public discomfort over drones, partly because they're able to operate for such long durations and partly because they collect information not only about the intended target but everything else around it.

"An unmanned plane is always gathering, storing and sharing information about the world around it," Singer said. "It always has the camera, versus a manned plane, where my eyes are not always sharing what it's seeing."

Nonetheless, thousands of drones could be used commercially in the United States in the next few years, the PBS program NOVA reported in "Rise of the Drones."

So how could they be used?

Singer declined to speculate, but said some options discussed for daily life include the "tacocopter" -- a delivery system for tacos where customers send in their GPS coordinates and get their meal by air. It's a concept that made a big splash a year ago but never got off the ground, so to speak. Or another use could be for medical purposes in rural, hard-to-reach areas, where doctors could send blood samples via "quadcopters" to labs for testing, thus skipping rough roads and getting results much faster.

"Where this really takes off is where innovation crosses with profit-seeking, where people come up with entirely new roles that we haven't even thought about yet," he said.

View all of our international and defense coverage and read more about how to build your own drone.

News Wrap: 55 Killed in Coordinated Attacks Across Iraq

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 18:09:00 EDT

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HARI SREENIVASAN: At least 55 people were killed in Iraq today in a string of coordinated bombings and other attacks. Dozens of others were wounded. Explosions rang out from Baghdad and Fallujah to Kirkuk and Tikrit. The force of the blasts reduced city blocks to rubble, caused chaos in the streets and left bystanders bewildered.

MAN: What have those innocent people done to deserve this? Lives of innocent people don't mean anything? We are only asking for security and safety. Is this safe? No electricity, no cars. They are targeting everything, even people. Everything is targeted. Why? Why are they doing that?

HARI SREENIVASAN: The violence came less than a week before Iraqis hold local elections, their first vote since U.S. troops withdrew in 2011. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but such attacks are often a trademark of al-Qaida's Iraqi wing.

A major sell-off hit Wall Street today. Stocks plunged after China reported its economic growth slowed in the first quarter, and commodity prices took a hit. The Dow Jones industrial average lost nearly 266 points to close at 14,599. The Nasdaq fell 78 points to close at 3,216.

There was relative quiet out of North Korea today, as the communist state celebrated the birthday of its founder with a flower festival. Celebrations were focused in Pyongyang, and residents dressed in their finest clothing to lay flowers before statues of former North Korean leaders. A day earlier, North Korea rejected the South's offer of dialogue, calling it -- quote -- "a crafty trick."

A federal judge in Washington has refused to intervene in a detainee hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He ruled today that federal law bars judicial review of enemy combatant claims of mistreatment. A Yemeni prisoner, Musaab al-Madhwani, had said he and other hunger strikers are denied drinking water and medical care and kept in extreme cold. In another development, some of the 166 detainees fought with military guards on Saturday over being moved to new cells.

The New York Times won four Pulitzer Prizes today, as the 2013 awards were announced, among The Times' honors, the prize for investigative reporting on allegations that Wal-Mart bribed officials in Mexico. The Denver Post won for breaking news reporting on the mass killing of 12 people at a movie theater. In the arts, Adam Johnson won the fiction prize for "The Orphan Master's Son." And the poetry prize went to Sharon Olds for "Stag's Leap." We will have an encore presentation of a profile of Sharon Olds later in the program.

Those are some of the day's major stories -- now back to Jeff.

'Shepherd in Combat Boots': Korean War Army Chaplain Awarded Medal of Honor

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 18:49:00 EDT

View the NewsHour's series of reports from Iraq leading up to the August 2010 withdrawal of U.S. combat forces.

JEFFREY BROWN: Finally tonight: an award that's coming 60 years after the fact.

President Obama bestowed the Medal of Honor on a Catholic priest who died in a Korean war POW camp. Father Emil Kapaun never fired a bullet in the conflict or even carried a weapon. Instead, he took care of wounded soldiers, often at the expense of his own safety and health, on the battlefield and later at a Chinese POW camp, where he would steal food to give to other prisoners.

Those who came home from the camp never stopped praising his actions, and that finally paid off. After a military investigation and some legislation, their hopes of a medal for Father Kapaun became a reality this afternoon.

President Obama presented the award to Kapaun's nephew in a ceremony in the East Room of the White House.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Father Kapaun has been called a shepherd in combat boots. His fellow soldiers who felt his grace and his mercy called him a saint, a blessing from God.

Today, we bestow another title on him, recipient of our nation's highest military declaration, the Medal of Honor.

In the chaos, dodging bullets and explosions, Father Kapaun raced between foxholes, out past the front lines, and into no-man's land, dragging the wounded to safety. When his commanders ordered an evacuation, he chose to stay, gathering the injured, tending to their wounds.

When the enemy broke through and the combat was hand-to-hand, he carried on, comforting the injured and the dying, offering some measure of peace as they left this earth. When enemy forces bore down, it seemed like the end, that these wounded Americans, more than a dozen of them, would be gunned down.

But Father Kapaun spotted a wounded Chinese officer. He pleaded with this Chinese officer and convinced him to call out to his fellow Chinese. The shooting stopped, and they negotiated a safe surrender, saving those American lives.

Then, as Father Kapaun was being led away, he saw another American, wounded, unable to walk, laying in a ditch, defenseless. An enemy soldier was standing over him, rifle aimed at his head ready to shoot. And Father Kapaun marched over and pushed the enemy soldier aside. And then, as the soldier watched stunned, Father Kapaun carried that wounded American away.

This is the valor we honor today, an American soldier who didn't fire a gun, but who wielded the mightiest weapon of all: a love for his brothers so pure that he was willing to die so that they might live.

In the camps that winter, deep in the valley, men could freeze to death in their sleep. Father Kapaun offered them his own clothes. Their bodies were ravaged by dysentery. He grabbed some rocks, pounded metal into pots and boiled clean water. They lived in filth. He washed their clothes and he cleansed their wounds.

The guards ridiculed his devotion to his savior and the almighty. They took his clothes and make him stand in the freezing cold for hours. Yet, he never lost his faith. If anything, it only grew stronger.

Father Kapaun's life, I think, is a testimony to the human spirit, the power of faith, and reminds us of the good that we can do each and every day, regardless of the most difficult of circumstances.

JEFFREY BROWN: President Obama awarding the Medal of Honor to Father Emil Kapaun more than 60 years after his death as a prisoner in the Korean War.

Ten Years After Baghdad's Fall, a Look Back at the Iraq War

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 13:09:00 EDT

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Watch a video synopsis of the Iraq war. Edited by Justin Scuiletti. (Warning: Some video footage is graphic.)

On March 17, 2003, President George W. Bush addressed the nation:

"All the decades of deceit and cruelty have now reached an end. Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict commenced at a time of our choosing."

When Saddam didn't comply, the United States bombed and then invaded Baghdad. Operation Iraqi Freedom had begun.

Iraqis cheered as a statue of Saddam Hussein toppled to the ground, 10 years ago Tuesday. On board the U.S. Aircraft Carrier Abraham Lincoln 22 days later, President Bush declared a successful U.S. mission in Iraq.

U.S. Marines pull down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square in Baghdad on April 9, 2003. Photo by Mirrorpix/Getty Images.

The toppled statue was replaced by one depicting an Iraqi family holding a crescent moon and sun as seen in this August 2010 file photo by Larisa Epatko/PBS NewsHour. (See more photos on Flickr.)

But before the final combat troop withdrawal on Aug. 19, 2010, officially ending Operation Iraqi Freedom almost seven and a half years after it had begun, the United States and Iraq would see highs and lows in a conflict that would continue to be the subject of debate to this day.

Related Resources:

New York Times reporter and author Michael Gordon and Washington Post editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran reflect on the Iraq war 10 years later on the March 19 NewsHour.

Freelance photographers, who covered the early stages of the Iraq war, put their photos on exhibit in a San Francisco museum.

Share your thoughts on the lessons learned from the Iraq war.

NewsHour forward planning editor George Griffin contributed to this report. See all of our World coverage.

With Military Training Cutbacks Coming, How Are You Affected by Sequestration?

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 08:50:00 EDT

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The residents of the Hampton Roads area of southeastern Virginia, with its large military presence, are on edge: sequestration is going into effect.

Sequestration is the term for the $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts the federal government must make by September, including $42.7 billion in Defense Department cuts.

According to the above video report from WHRO correspondent Cathy Lewis, which aired March 28 on the PBS NewsHour, the Navy had to cancel a six-month deployment of the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman in order to reach its spending reduction targets, giving the 5,000 sailors just a few days' notice.

"If you're a single sailor and you were expecting to deploy and that was stopped at the last minute, if you own a car, you have put it in storage or perhaps you have sold it. You have gotten out of an apartment or a home you may share with a few other people. You have put your household goods in storage. You have disconnected from the world," retired Adm. Craig Quigley of the Hampton Roads Military and Federal Facilities Alliance told Lewis.

The government also is expected to make cuts through temporary unpaid leave, or furlough days, for some civilian employees. Trying to ease the blow, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel recently announced that civilian Pentagon employees would be furloughed for 14 days, rather than 22 days as originally planned, and that furloughs would be delayed until June.

Before the sequestration deadline passed, and Congress was still struggling to make a budget deal to avoid the mandatory cuts, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told Judy Woodruff Feb. 20 on the NewsHour that in addition to furloughs, sequestration meant cutting back on military training for conflicts other than Afghanistan.

"By the end of the year ... two-third of our Army units, active-duty Army units and all of our reserve units will not be ready to fight other wars," he warned.

Have you been impacted by sequestration? The NewsHour wants to hear your story. You can submit here, write us below in the comments section or tweet @NewsHourWorld.

We'll publish a selection of stories here on the Rundown.

Additional resources:

Read more about sequestration cuts in this Washington Post report.

The Council on Foreign Relations describes how the budget got to where it is today in this Debt, Deficits and the Defense Budget backgrounder.

See all of our military and world coverage.

Returning Veterans Face Huge Backlog, Disorganization in Fight for Benefits

VA Backlog Files Stacked So High, They Posed Safety Risk to Staff

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 12:03:00 EDT

Stacks of Veterans Affairs claim folders overtake a regional office in Winston-Salem, N.C. These photos were included in a 2012 report from the Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General.

While researching our story on the Veterans Affairs benefits backlog, we saw this Veterans Affairs Administration Inspector General's report that points out that at one VA center, a regional office in Winston-Salem, N.C., had so much paper that it "created an unsafe workspace for (VA) employees and appeared to have the potential to compromise the integrity of the building."

The IG report, from August, 2012, found that at this one office alone, "37,000 claims folders were stored on top of file cabinets." The report says that this "creates an unsafe environment for the employees, overexposes many claims folders to risk of fire/water damage, inadvertent loss and possible misplacement, as well as impedes (Veterans Affairs Regional Office) productivity by reducing access to many folders in a timely manner."

According to the report, the sheer weight of the combined folders actually exceeded the load-bearing capacity of the building itself.

As claims continue to pour in, almost one million veterans are currently waiting for their benefit claims to be processed, according to an investigation conducted by the Center for Investigative Reporting. The CIR's report also showed that the average wait time for a disability claim to be resolved is 279 days. First time claims take longer, averaging 318 days, and the wait time has grown 2,000 percent in the past four years.

The managers at the Winston-Salem office told the inspectors that they asked the VA's regional headquarters for extra space, but "never received a formal written response to that request."

This might be evidence of the fact that since 2009, the VA has processed a record number of claims, more than four million since 2009, according to a VA spokesman in Washington.

In a conversation on April 1, the office's director C.J. Rawls told PBS NewsHour that the file problem has been solved with a new storage system. "I'm happy to tell you that we've moved those files." A local news program has pictures of the newly file-free facility, which you can see here.

The inspectors took photos of the file overload, which they included in their 2012 report, and can be seen here:

From the IG's report: "We noticed floors bowing under the excess weight to the extent that the tops of file cabinets were noticeably unlevel throughout the storage area."

"Narrow aisles due to file cabinet placement may also impede employees from exiting file storage areas in case of emergency or crisis situations."

"Sloping floors cause cabinets to shift due to the increased weight over time."

After the inspection, Rawls wrote a staff memo. Among its directives: "Do not put overflow files on top of the cabinets."

Rawls said that they put some of the files in temporary storage, while they built a "high-density file cabinet system."

She explained that about 60,000 records that hadn't been referenced in the last year were moved permanently to a storage facility offsite. "But we can get them back in three to five days if anybody files a supplemental claim" and needs them, she said.

Rawls said the changes were in place and fully operational as of March.

Where are Veterans Waiting the Longest for Benefits?

Returning Veterans Face Huge Backlog, Disorganization in Fight for Benefits

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 18:23:00 EDT

View a map of veterans waiting for benefits, created by the Center for Investigative Reporting.

RAY SUAREZ: Now to the battle for benefits for service men and women after they return home.

President Obama has called caring for veterans a top priority of his administration, but a new report shows that the number of men and women who served in the military who are waiting more than a year for benefits has grown 2,000 percent since 2009.

We turn again to Hari for that story.

HARI SREENIVASAN: These Iraq and Afghanistan veterans brought their fight to Capitol Hill last week. They're trying to draw attention to the medical benefits backlog at the Veterans Administration, benefits owed to them for their service.

Nearly a quarter-of-a-million men and women who served in the armed forces have been waiting more than a year for their claims to be resolved. According to an investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting, based on leaked internal VA documents, the claims processing time has grown in the past four years, and the number of people waiting has increased.

Aaron Glantz has written extensively about the VA's problems and uncovered the story.

AARON GLANTZ, Center for Investigative Reporting: The most consistent thing that I hear is that: I came home and the country doesn't care and the government is making me wait far too long for my benefits.

And then, if you have a traumatic brain injury or PTSD or one of these other conditions, you're dealing with it on your own.

HARI SREENIVASAN: In 2009, 11,000 veterans were waiting more than a year for benefits. Last year, that figure was 245,000, a more than twenty-fold increase, numbers the VA confirms.

Glantz's report also showed that, in urban areas, like New York City, the average time to have a claim processed is 642 days.

We sat down with three veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who are frustrated with the delays.

REIRED SGT. RACHEL MCNEILL, U.S. Army Reserves: My name is Rachel McNeill. I was a sergeant in the Army. And I was medically retired in 2010. The most recent notice of disagreement that the VA acknowledged was over 800 days ago.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Sgt. McNeill had respiratory ailments from a tour in Iraq.

RETIRED CAPT. AARON THORSON, U.S. Army; My name is Aaron Thorson. I was a captain in the Army until 2011, when I exited out, transitioned into civilian life. I waited 405 days for my disability claim to go through.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Capt. Thorson was a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan who suffers from a crushed disc in his back, a common injury among combat pilots.

RETIRED STAFF SGT. ZACH MCILWAIN, U.S. Army: I'm Zach McIlwain. I was in the United States Army. I was a staff sergeant. I deployed in Iraq in 2005 -- or 2006 to 2009. And when I got back, I filed my claims, and yesterday was my day 908.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Staff Sgt. McIlwain sustained a hand injury during his time in the Army. The average time for the resolution of a disability claim is 279 days.

First-time claims can take even longer, averaging 318 days, leaving veterans to pay for expenses on their own in the meantime. These veterans say their interactions with the VA included difficulty finding someone to talk to, lost paperwork and a slow, unresponsive bureaucracy.

RACHEL MCNEILL: It's really hard to find someone to actually talk to. You know, I spent a lot of time on hold. You know, I can't even -- I can't even imagine how many hours of my life I have actually spent on hold at the VA.

I will be -- you know, they will pass you around to different departments, and nobody can help you. And you know, then you will get hung up on because they -- somebody just drops your call. You know, it's just -- it's a totally incoherent process.

ZACH MCILWAIN: They kept losing my medical documentation. I kept handing it off to them, and somebody would lose it. And then, in fact, one of my claims was denied because, even though I had handed in the paperwork, they lost it and denied my claim for failure of receipt of paperwork.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Retired four-star Gen. Eric Shinseki was appointed Cabinet secretary for the Veterans Affairs Administration in 2009.

He says a big part of the backlog is because the VA began making it easier for veterans from previous wars to claim benefits from the side effects of Agent orange and Gulf War Syndrome.

SECRETARY OF VETERANS AFFAIRS RETIRED GEN. ERIC SHINSEKI: We added to our workload a bit, because three years ago we decided to take care of some unfinished business, Agent Orange for Vietnam veterans, for the Gulf War veterans, Gulf War illness. Nine diseases in 20 years had never been addressed.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Reporter Aaron Glantz:

AARON GLANTZ: I think there is some merit to that, but it's not the complete answer. They have had a 50 percent increase in the number of veterans filing claims during the Obama administration.

On the other hand, as I mentioned, the number of veterans waiting more than a year has increased by more than 2,000 percent. And the overall waiting list has more than doubled. So, it's not just that more people are filing claims or that more people are filing more complicated claims. It's also that the reforms that they have put in place to deal with this have not worked.

HARI SREENIVASAN: The veterans we spoke to are part of that waiting list and feel like they have to keep fighting even after returning home.

So we spoke to a couple of veterans that came by our studios yesterday, and I told them, if I was to sit in your office, I would carry their message. It's fairly simple.

ZACH MCILWAIN: When I volunteered to do convoy security, where I knew that something could happen, I did that having faith that if anything happened to me, you would be taken care of.

HARI SREENIVASAN: You feel left behind?

RACHEL MCNEILL: Yes. Why should you have to fight? Why should you have to fight for your benefits? I went to war. I did what I had to do.

HARI SREENIVASAN: What do you say to these veterans?

ERIC SHINSEKI: There is no reason for veterans to have to wait, as these veterans are obviously confronting.

But we are here to solve this problem. Four years ago, as I said, no plan. We have a plan today, and we are in the midst of fielding this. I think 260,000 claims were added to our inventory just by that one decision alone on Agent Orange. And you can add to that Gulf War illness and you can add to that combat PTSD.

So, hundreds of thousands of claims added to a paper process, we thought that was the right thing to do.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Some of the veterans we spoke with, one of the key things that they have learned in the military is failing to plan is planning to fail. You knew this was coming. Congress has been lobbying for 10 years to try to incorporate these groups of veterans in. Was there a systematic failure to plan for this influx of veterans?

ERIC SHINSEKI: Well, 10 years of war and the requirements have grown.

And we're in paper, and four years ago, there was no plan to come out of paper to go into electronics. That plan is in place.

AARON GLANTZ: The VA loves to talk about how they're computerizing this process.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Glantz says the plans are insufficient and that the system is still buckling under a mountain of paperwork.

AARON GLANTZ: In our internal documents that we have obtained from the VA, they show that, as of January, 97 percent of claims were still on paper. And this is after a four-year, half-billion-dollar effort.

Last August, the VA's own inspector general found that there were so many paper file folders at the VA office in North Carolina that it was damaging the structural integrity of the building.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Meanwhile, for some veterans, the wait has already taken a toll.

Did any of you feel like giving up?

ZACH MCILWAIN: I had moments where I just didn't see an end. I didn't see an end state. There was no way I was going to get through this as far as being able to move forward.

I don't think I ever -- I was never really going to follow through, but I had my moments where I was in a dark place trying to find -- seek resolution and figure out -- it's hard to talk about and it's hard to admit to is, yes, I had my moments where I questioned what kind of future I would have.

RACHEL MCNEILL: We don't have time.

HARI SREENIVASAN: These veterans stress the urgency of a solution.

AARON THORSON: Yes, there's no time. And we can't afford for this to happen, continue to happen. There's -- there's 22 veteran suicides every day, and there's people out there that need help.

HARI SREENIVASAN: So who do you think is responsible for where we are today and the frustration that so many of these veterans are facing?

ERIC SHINSEKI: The president was very clear when I arrived four years ago he wants this fixed. And he has given us the resources, a 40 percent increase. And so you're speaking to the individual who has that responsibility.

HARI SREENIVASAN: The buck stops with you?

ERIC SHINSEKI: The buck stops right here.

HARI SREENIVASAN: While this group of former service members didn't hold the secretary personally responsible, they are pushing for a presidential commission to figure out solutions to what they consider a broken system.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Online, you can see more from Hari's interviews with the veterans and VA Secretary Shinseki.

Veterans Voice Frustration Over Benefits Backlog to VA Secretary Shinseki

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 10:39:00 EDT

Watch Video

Watch PBS NewsHour's extended interview with three Iraq and Afghanistan Army veterans who see the claims backlog as a systemic problem. Sgt. Rachel McNeill and Staff Sgt. Zach McIlwain are veterans of the Iraq War. Capt. Aaron Thorson served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nearly 250,000 veterans wait more than a year for their medical claims to wind through the Veterans Administration before receiving their earned benefits, according to an investigation conducted by the Center for Investigative Reporting. The report, based on the VA's own internal numbers, also shows that almost 1 million veterans are currently waiting for their benefit claims to be processed and that the wait time has grown 2,000 percent in the past four years.

According to the CIR's recently updated numbers, the average time for the resolution of a disability claims is 279 days. First time claims can take even longer, averaging 318 days, leaving veterans to pay for expenses on their own in the meantime.

The VA says it has a plan and that things will improve. The agency says it aims to have all claims processed within 125 days with 98 percent accuracy in 2015.

Hari Sreenivasan talks with veterans and Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki about the delays and backlog.

The video above is NewsHour's full broadcast report on the backlog that aired Friday. Also available is an extended interview with VA Secretary Shinseki. He responds to Rachel McNeill and Aaron Thorson, veterans affected by the backlog.

We want to hear from you. Consider this an open thread for discussion. Tell us your story: How have you been affected by the backlog?

Joshua Barajas and Charles Anderson shot these videos. Barajas edited them. You can subscribe to Hari on Facebook, Google Plus and on Twitter @Hari.

Southeastern Virginia's Military Industry Feels Effects of Sequester

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 18:31:00 EDT

JUDY WOODRUFF: Next: to the automatic federal budget cuts known as the sequester.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said today that the Pentagon is trying to ease the impact on as many as 800,000 civilian employees, cutting the number of unpaid furlough days by a third. Hagel credits a new spending bill signed by President Obama. It gives the Defense Department more flexibility to deal with billions of dollars of across-the-board cuts that began on March 1^st.

At a news conference this afternoon, however, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey said that the Pentagon is still being forced to make difficult choices.

GEN. MARTIN DEMPSEY, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman: On Monday, we will be halfway through the fiscal year, and we will be 80 percent spent in our operating funds. We don't yet have a satisfactory solution to that shortfall. And we're doing everything we can to stretch our readiness out.

To do this, we will have to trade at some level and to some degree our future readiness for current operations. It will cost us more eventually in both money and time to recover in the years to come. We will be trying to recover lost readiness at the same time that we're trying to reshape the force. We can do it, but that's the uncomfortable truth.

RAY SUAREZ: Despite the Defense Department's efforts to mitigate the impact of sequestration on the nation's military readiness, the across-the-board budget cuts are already starting to take a toll in communities where federal spending is the backbone of the local economy.

That's true of southeastern Virginia.

Correspondent Cathy Lewis of WHRO in Hampton Roads brings us this update on how her region is coping. Her story is part of our collaboration with public media partners across the country in a series we call Battleground Dispatches.

PROTESTER: No more furloughs!

CATHY LEWIS, WHRO: These federal civilian workers know furlough notices are coming, and they're not happy to lose the work.

In the Hampton Roads region of southeastern Virginia, where nearly half the economy relies on federal spending, workers were protesting being forced to take days off without pay between now and September. Today's news from the Defense Department will ease that pain, reducing the number of furlough days from 22 to 14.

But this region remains anxious over the impact of sequestration on the local economy. The cuts are the result of the so-called sequestration act, the automatic across-the-board reduction in spending that started to kick in March 1^st. It mandates roughly $85 billion dollar cut from federal spending by September.

MAN: Blow your horn! Blow your horn!

CATHY LEWIS: Staying home one day a week adds up.

MAN: It's going to affect my whole family. I got three kids. I got kids in school. It's ridiculous. It's a lot of money. It's roughly about seven grand.

CATHY LEWIS: Hampton Roads has the largest concentration of American military assets in the world. Six percent of the population here wears a military uniform. It's the only place in the country where nuclear aircraft carriers are built, but the federal presence extends far beyond the fleet.

The region is home to a NATO command, the largest concentration of Coast Guard assets in the world, and 13 federal departments, including NASA and the Jefferson Lab. It's beginning to sink in that sequestration is part of a bigger trend here, an inevitable new normal of less defense spending, now that the U.S. is out of Iraq and disengaging in Afghanistan.

Craig Quigley is a retired rear admiral who now heads the Hampton Roads Military and Federal Facilities Alliance.

RET. ADM. CRAIG QUIGLEY, Hampton Roads Military and Federal Facilities Alliance: We can get smaller in our defense establishment and I believe still do what the nation requires their military to do, but sequester is not the mechanism to do it. It takes away all judgment. It doesn't allow for chopping off from the bottom of the least important programs to protect the most important programs.

CATHY LEWIS: While the president exempted uniformed personnel from pay cuts, service members are not spared the effects of sequestration.

Because it needed to reach the dollar targets of the sequester, the Navy canceled the six-month deployment of the aircraft carrier Truman, all with only two days' notice. That sent more than 5,000 sailors scrambling.

CRAIG QUIGLEY: If you're a single sailor and you were expecting to deploy and that was stopped at the last minute, if you own a car, you have put it in storage or perhaps you have sold it. You have gotten out of an apartment or a home you may share with a few other people. You have put your household goods in storage. You have disconnected from the world.

And now, all of a sudden, you're not going. And now I need to get that car back, I need to get my household goods out of storage, I need to find another apartment. And the Navy pays for none of that.

CATHY LEWIS: There are also nearly 40,000 civilians at work in shipyards like this one. When a ship goes into the yard, it's called an availability. There were 11 such availabilities on tap this summer that were threatened by federal inaction.

Now it looks like the money will be there for those 11 availabilities, along with two aircraft carrier overhauls. But no one is celebrating just yet.

MAN: Insecure. Everybody is insecure, fear, a little angry. But what can you do?

CATHY LEWIS: Captain Bill Crow spent more than 30 years in the Navy. Today, he heads the Virginia Ship Repair Association, representing more than 200 shipyards.

RET. CAPT. WILLIAM CROW, Virginia Ship Repair Association: If they were to cancel these availabilities, I can tell you, yes, they were concerned about being able to put bread on their table from being furloughed or laid off. And that may still come to pass.

But I will also tell you that, deep down in their heart, each and every one of those 40,000 people take great pride in the fact that they play a part in the maintenance and readiness of our United States Navy. And they're doggone proud of that.

CATHY LEWIS: Both Quigley and Crow say, in all their years around federal budgeting, they have never seen anything like this.

Neither have the owners of Davis Interiors. For more than 58 years, they have custom-built and installed the furniture that goes on ships at sea. It's a three-generation family business for Whitney Metzger.

WHITNEY METZGER, Davis Interiors: We know that we will be busy at least through May or June, but after that, we're not entirely sure what's going to happen. Right now, we have had to let go about five employees, unfortunately. And we have furloughed most of our staff that were working three- and four-day workweeks.

People are working Fridays on an as-needed basis, but, for the most part, it's empty here on Fridays now.

CATHY LEWIS: Like many in the front offices and on the front lines, Metzger worries about the future for her company and her employees, and she wants Washington to know that real people's livelihoods are on the line.

WHITNEY METZGER: This isn't a political game. And it's very frustrating to see so many politicians in Washington turn it into that.

CATHY LEWIS: Ten of the 11 members of Congress from Virginia voted against the bill that would have avoided sequestration. Metzger says trimming the staff now allows Davis Interiors to retain a smaller, but still highly skilled work force.

Keeping those skilled workers in the area when work is becoming more scarce is a concern shared by the region's leaders who, some say, haven't done enough to diversify the economy.

Craig Quigley says the potential loss of 12,000 good-paying jobs and more than $2 billion dollars in the local economy may be a wakeup call that's finally too loud to ignore.

CRAIG QUIGLEY: The day has arrived. OK? The federal spending in Hampton Roads is going down. So, we can accept a lower level of economic vitality, no growth, flat economy. Is that really what we want?

Or do we want to get serious finally about diversifying the economy, finding something to supplement, not replace -- I don't want to go to zero in federal spending, but I want to supplement it and reduce it as a percentage of the gross regional product, so that we are not totally drug-dependent on that.

CATHY LEWIS: But this region that depends so heavily on the business of government had hoped for a phased withdrawal of federal spending. Making so many cuts by Sept. 30^th feels to many like quitting cold turkey.

Veteran Iraq War Reporters Reflect 10 Years On

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 09:00:00 EDT

Martha Raddatz in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2007.

For the journalists covering the Iraq war, the experience was in many ways unlike any other war. If you were part of the invasion -- which began this week 10 years ago -- it often meant being "embedded" with the American military for weeks, with your gas mask never more than an arm's length away.

Television and radio journalists broadcast the sprint of troops and armor through the desert to Saddam Hussein's capital -- live -- to the living rooms of so many around the world, as the war began throughout the fall of Baghdad several weeks later. Print reporters brought their readers the tales of heroes and enemy forces that seemed to disappear into the sand. The pictures captured by photojournalists from those early days of the war were extraordinary; the smiling faces of Iraqis welcoming their liberators, and the last gasps of the Baathist regime.

It was a quick end, but really just the beginning. For the hardened reporters who stuck with the story 10 years of war brought a new understanding of the order of battle, of the lives of a people under occupation, under siege perhaps, as long internalized anger turned neighbor against neighbor drawn on religious lines. No one guessed it would go on so long. In fact, the public was told it wouldn't and stayed largely unaware of the extreme dangers. According to numbers from the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 150 journalists and 54 media support workers were killed between March 2003 and December 2011 in Iraq.

On this anniversary of the Iraq war's start, we spoke with two veteran journalists with years of war coverage under their belts. Their answers have been edited for clarity and length.

Martha Raddatz is the senior global affairs correspondent for ABC News. When the war began, she went from being a Pentagon correspondent to covering the war on the frontlines. Raddatz made more than 20 trips to Iraq, reported on American forces, interviewed top military commanders and was embedded with troops at some of the worst points in the fighting. She also brought focus to the spouses and loved ones who feared that each day could bring devastating news. For those soldiers that made it home, she brought light to the physical and mental scars that don't end with the war. She wrote about these themes in a book entitled "The Long Road Home".

For a veteran war reporter like NPR's Middle East correspondent Deborah Amos, conflict coverage was the routine. But in Baghdad after the invasion it became clear to her that this war presented a different and new kind of dangerous. Preferring "civilian embedding" over military coverage, she focused on the Iraqis who were struggling with the war as deeper sectarian divides bubbled up. In the later years, Amos immersed herself in the lives of Iraqi refugees in Syria. Her time there resulted in a book, "The Eclipse of the Sunnis", where she chronicles the sectarian strife that engulfed the magnitude of displaced Iraqis.

What were some of the challenges that you and other journalists faced in the first few years that U.S. troops were on the ground in Iraq?

Martha Raddatz: It really changed. When it began, you could go around to the main areas pretty easily. I remember flying into the country in late summer or early fall of 2003. There was really quite a bit of freedom of movement, and you didn't have to worry too much.

By mid-2004 you couldn't go anywhere outside of Baghdad without the military and it got increasingly more dangerous, particularly for television reporting.

It was the lack of front lines that made this war was so different. If you look back in history, in Vietnam you'd have these intense battles for days, but then you could go back and feel fairly secure in some places, but in every place our service members were [in Iraq], they were at risk. They were safe nowhere.

How did this affect the soldiers?

I think you've got so many guys coming home, who spent years with adrenaline going all the time. I remember some early conversations about the fact that you could just drive around and get blown up.

I remember one soldier saying to me when we were just walking around on patrol one night in some particularly bad area and he said, "it just makes me crazy to know that no matter how hard I've trained, no matter how much I know, no matter how much mental discipline I have, they have this advantage where I could just walk across something and get blown up." They had to adapt to that, and they did what they could to try and fight the IEDs, but it's pretty darn hard to keep ahead of that.

So many soldiers have come home with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Was this a result of this nature of war as you described?

Well, I'm not a psychologist so I can't say that, but I'll tell you what has to be a contributing factor: the number of deployments. These two wars together [with Afghanistan], and you have to talk about the two wars together because some people started deploying in 2001, are some of the longest wars that we've had. There are some amazing people I've met who seem to be just fine, but you can't expect everyone to deploy three or four times, lose so many friends, and see so many things that no one should have to see and not be affected by it.

There are people who are really struggling, and I think, "oh I met so-and-so seven years ago and he's great and he's a double amputee." Well, they still are. Or I see these young spouses whose husbands went off to war and came back six weeks later brain injured. And now, truly 10 years later, they're still taking care of them. There's a mother who takes care of a Marine. That will be their life. Their whole life will be taking care of their loved ones.

U.S. Army 3rd Infantry Division 3-7 infantry Corp. Charles Johnson (left) from Myrtle Beach, S.C., shows his squad an Iraqi flag captured during an raid on a Iraqi border post on March 21, 2003. Photo by Scott Nelson/Getty Images.

Did we as a nation learn anything from the war?

Yeah, I think we have. One of the things I'm proud of is that the American public figured out that things weren't going very well. The press would get a very hard time from some saying, "you're only telling us the bad news and pointing out the awful things." During that time you did hear from the administration that things were going better than they were. President Bush in one of his final interviews said he had to say those things to keep morale up, but I think the troops knew full well what was going on over there. The American people figured out that wasn't the case.

In all the times that you've reported from Iraq, was there something that you underestimated or weren't prepared for?

I guess I underestimated the length of time I would be going there. It would take up such an enormous part of my life, my passion, and what was important to me. I guess I wasn't prepared to forge the bonds that I did, I guess I didn't think about it. I started covering the Pentagon in peacetime. It wasn't as if I was going in with the idea of going off to war, it was a gradual thing, and in so many ways, what was happening to our military and our country of getting sucked into that war, I was too. I am proud of that work, and I am grateful for the people that I've met. I have seen more tragedy than I wish I'd witnessed, but from that I've met some amazing people.

The other profound memories are of the moon in Iraq. It was one of those things where if it was the end of the day and you'd seen something terrifying or uplifting, the moon in Baghdad is a pretty amazing thing. There's the old cliche that it's the same moon back home, but when you're looking at it there and there are helicopters flying by in the desert, it is just stunning and beautiful.

How did you first start to cover the war?

Deborah Amos: I first came to Baghdad in early May of 2003, when it was a remarkable place to be. You could go anywhere and do anything in the country. We went from Kurdistan to Basra, and I think nobody understood or saw how bad it was gonna get in those early days. It's hard to say, but I think it's really hard to get over it, and I ask people who go what it's like, and if you have been there in the terrible days it's really hard to get over it. It was bad. There were bodies everywhere all the time and so that tends to be my major memory of Iraq and how bad that violence was until 2005.

Were you embedded with the military at any point?

I never was. Not that I think there's anything wrong with it, it just wasn't for me. I usually get embedded with civilians. I'm more comfortable with that kind of coverage. There was a real split in who came. There were lots of people who were Pentagon reporters, I was a regional reporter, I had covered the Arab world and so that's where my expertise was, if I had any. I chose to stay on the civilian side of things.

An Iraqi woman and her children flee the fighting in southern Iraq's main city of Basra on March 28, 2003. Photo by Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images.

What did you do after Iraq?

I went to Syria and started covering the Iraqi refugees. I came back to the Middle East after the Rafik Hariri assassination was there in 2006 during the Israeli invasion of Beirut. Then, all of a sudden it became clear that there were 2 million Iraqis in Damascus. So I was covering the shadow of the Iraq war by covering the refugees in Damascus, because there were 2,000 arriving every day.

In looking at the lives of displaced refugees or considering reconstruction efforts within Iraq, is there progress that's going unmentioned as other Middle East conflicts have taken more attention in recent years? Did we forget about Iraq because the war has essentially ended?

I don't think it's because the war has ended, honestly. I think the reason that we don't talk about it much is because I think the American Public doesn't want to hear about it, and that usually means our editors don't want to hear about it. I don't want to compare it to Vietnam, but I think it's going to take us awhile as a country to assess that war and its cost and whether or not it was worth it or not. My sense is that it's very hard to get Iraq coverage in the newspaper. Of course, within the Middle East there are other things that take its place. I saw this happen in Lebanon after 1982. There are some moments where we just turn our eyes away for a while. It's either too painful or we haven't assessed it properly. In this case we have a 10-year anniversary so we're forced to look back.

What were some of the things that stayed with you from your reporting?

You always remember your translators, because if was how you understand the society. When we first got there I didn't ask who was a Sunni and who was a Shiite. I came to find out later that all of our translators were Shiites and all of our drivers were Sunnis. As time went on, you had to be very aware of the sectarian divide because you'd be taking a Shiite translator into a Sunni neighborhood, and they would say terrible things of Shiites there.

Then you have these people who had been so friendly and open and demanding, this militant hospitality that you're always subjected to in the Middle East, but it became too dangerous for them to ever bring us home. To be associated with us was way too dangerous for them.

So what I saw was this progression, into the most violent place I had ever seen. We lived in compounds with manned machine guns on the roof, and we built safe houses and rooms with metal doors. I've covered wars my entire career, but it was never anything like that.

You had to think about what if "they" -- and you didn't know precisely who "they" were -- climbed over the walls of your compound? How long could you hold out before someone could come and save you? That was just part of everyday coverage. It wasn't written about or talked about, but it was there.

Was that something you expected?

I had seen Lebanon fall apart, Afghanistan was dangerous, Bosnia was dangerous, but this was an element that I hadn't seen before. It was surprising only because I had that early memory of how open the country had been in the beginning. I had covered Iraq in 1991, and I always said I wouldn't go back to Iraq until Saddam was gone. I knew how brutal the regime was. It was a joy as a journalist to go back in 2003 and be able to go to places that I never thought I would go to: Basra, Tikrit, Mosul. These were all places that were out of the question when Saddam was in power. It was an amazing experience, and so that difference of going down into that terrible violent black hole I think was all the more shocking because of the comparison.

On Tuesday, PBS NewsHour senior correspondent Judy Woodruff spoke to reporters and authors Michael Gordon and Rajiv Chandrasekaran about their recollections of the war:

Watch Video

Raddatz and Amos provided their photos. View more of our World coverage and follow us on Twitter:

Reflecting on Lessons Learned From the U.S. Invasion of Iraq, 10 Years Later

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 18:44:00 EDT

JUDY WOODRUFF: Finally tonight, we return to Iraq and the lessons learned 10 years after the U.S. invasion.

I'm joined now by two journalists who have written extensively on the subject, New York Times reporter and author of "The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq From George W. Bush to Barack Obama" Michael Gordon, and Washington Post editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author of "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone."

We welcome you both to the NewsHour.

Rajiv, it's been more than a year since the U.S. pullout. What shape is Iraq in after the war? What's the legacy of the war now?

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN, The Washington Post: Well, Iraq, in my view, still remains a tinderbox with some real red-hot embers inside.

There's some parts of the country where things are not just stable. They're booming in the southern parts of the country dominated by the majority Shiite population, fueled by plentiful oil revenue. You see construction. You see investment. Life's pretty good for those people.

In the central part of the country, where the minority Sunni Arab population largely lives, particularly out west, people feel a lot more frustrated, a lot more disenfranchisement. In the capital, there have been some large protests by the Sunni community because they feel they have been cut out of the political process.

And up north, where a quarter of the population lives, the ethnic Kurdish population, again, things look pretty good for them economically, but there are real questions about the tensions there between them and the central government, particularly over oil revenue -- some key issues unresolved among these communities that were supposed to be addressed with the addition of more American troops that really have not been solved over these last several years.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Michael Gordon, you see problems associated with how the U.S. left and what's happened since then.

MICHAEL GORDON, The New York Times: Well, one factor -- and I agree with Rajiv's breakdown of the situation in Iraq -- but another factor has really been the decline of American influence.

And really over the last several years, it wasn't really the withdrawal of all of the forces, which Secretary Panetta has said has curtailed American political influence, but also there's been a bit of a disengagement on the part of the Obama administration itself.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What do you mean?

MICHAEL GORDON: Well, I think they view Iraq as just another country. They don't have the same emotional or psychological or even foreign policy stake in it that the previous administration had.

So I think the United States can't solve all the problems in Iraq certainly, but it's not playing as active and forceful and influential role in mediating these internal issues.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What's the relationship, Rajiv, between the people of Iraq and their government? How is that working?

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: Depends on which people.

For the majority Shiite population, they see the government as largely working in their interests. The others look at the government and say, these people aren't here to help me and serve me. I think there is a desire among many Iraqis for sort of a big tent, more secular government. But that's not the shape of the political system that they have today.

And much of this, in my view, is a result of the legacy of the American occupation and our military intervention there, decisions made almost 10 years ago today. De-Baathifying the country, meaning excluding some members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, those who didn't have any blood on their hands from future involvement in the country's economy and government, disbanding the army, those have had a lasting legacy in pushing these other groups out into the fringes.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What would you add about the government?

MICHAEL GORDON: Well, a big problem is not merely the sectarian and ethnic divides, but the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has been an increasingly authoritarian figure.

And he was a person that actually was picked by the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad -- encouraged at least -- to run for the prime minister's post. But a problem that a lot of communities have in Iraq, the Sunni, the Kurds and even some Shia, is that he is overstepping the bounds of his constitutional authorities as commander in chief.

The Obama administration made an effort before it took out the troops to try to curtail that and create a different governing arrangement. But it didn't work out.

GWEN IFILL: Let me bring you both to the U.S. side.

Michael, how -- you talk -- you both talk to the military a lot. But what -- how does the U.S. military view the war and what happened in Iraq for the most part?

MICHAEL GORDON: Well, you're never going to have any one view even within an institution like the military certainly.

I do think that the military can look at what they did in Iraq and they see a lot of early mistakes in the first years which exacerbated the conflict, the rush to failure, so to speak, handing over to the Iraqis before they were ready to shoulder the burden. I do think the surge, as a military operation and military strategy, was effective and was essential.

In fact, I can't imagine how President Obama could have withdrawn the forces and left behind a reasonably stable Iraq without it. So, I think the military acquitted itself well. Where there's been a shortfall has been on the political side in trying to craft a political set of arrangements in Iraq that leads to a stable and democratic country.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Rajiv, what's your sense on how the military views it and also lessons learned?

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: You look at the military today that is fighting still in Afghanistan, it looks nothing like the military that went into Baghdad in 2003, the advancements in vehicles, from soft-skin Humvees with no armoring, to these big, hulking, mine-resistant trucks, the advancements in battlefield medicine, just in the way our troops suppress insurgencies, instead of focusing in on killing and capturing bad guys exclusively, as we tried to do in 2003, this focus on counterinsurgency strategy and how it's really been absorbed within the ranks and implemented.

People can debate about whether it's a wise strategy or not or it's a -- it involves a good use of resources, but the way the military has gone about adapting and learning, particularly from those grim early years of the Iraq war, is nothing short of phenomenal, in my view.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What about the legacy? How do you see the legacy in terms of what the military has learned and how it's affected U.S. foreign policy?

MICHAEL GORDON: Well, I think the military learned how to do counterinsurgency. The public opinion may no longer support that, but forever is a long time. And I think you can't say we won't have to do that again at some point in the future.

Foreign policy-wise, Iraq poses some challenges, particularly now because of Syria, because Maliki has become and emerged essentially as a supporter of Assad, Bashar al-Assad, because he fears the consequences of a Sunni success really in Syria and what it might mean for his own domain and his own rule in Iraq.

And so it's become a very serious foreign policy challenge. And he, in fact, has been essentially cooperating with Iran, which has been flying military supplies across Iraq to Damascus.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What do you see as the long-lasting effects on U.S. foreign policy?

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: I think that these sorts of large costly conventional force operations we saw in Iraq, we had in Afghanistan, I think, has led many to recoil here in Washington, particularly at senior levels of the Obama administration.

And, to some degree, I think it's propelled the White House toward a greater reliance on drones, on intelligence operations, on the use of small special forces teams to target terrorist cells around the world, as opposed to trying to go and do more traditional nation-building and remaking of societies.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Michael Gordon, thank you for helping us look back.

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: Pleasure to talk to you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And we are collecting your Iraq war stories, your reflections and lessons learned on this anniversary. Find out how to share those on our home page.

Car Bombs and Suicide Attacks in Baghdad Mark 10th Anniversary of U.S. Invasion

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 18:02:00 EDT

JUDY WOODRUFF: A full decade after the Iraq war began, the violence has not abated. Today was the bloodiest day this year, as insurgents staged multiple attacks. A high-level minister was assassinated and dozens more died.

A warning: Our story contains some graphic images.

Thick black smoke rose above the Sadr City district in Baghdad, where a car bomb went off today in one of several coordinated attacks to rock the Iraqi capital; 65 people were killed and more than 200 wounded. In another instance, an explosion ripped through a popular market near Baghdad's fortified Green Zone.

MAN: There is a checkpoint at the main gate, but it is in vain. They don't search anybody. The car arrived and parked here, exploding and killing people.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The violence targeted mainly Shiite neighborhoods and highlighted the sectarian strife that still exists 10 years to the day since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq began.

FORMER PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH, United States: At hour, American coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.

JUDY WOODRUFF: It started with a wave of Shock and Awe airstrikes. Explosions lit up the night sky in Baghdad. Three weeks later, the capital fell, as residents cheered the arrival of American and coalition forces.

Marines toppled a statue of ousted leader Saddam Hussein, one of the first iconic images of the conflict. Another iconic image from the war came in May of 2003, when President George W. Bush announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq while aboard the U.S. Abraham Lincoln.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But it would be more than eight years before the last U.S. military convoys rolled out of Iraq.

SOLDIER: I'm happy. I'm happy to be out of Iraq.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Nearly 4,500 Americans were killed during the war that spanned close to nine years, along with more than 100,000 Iraqis. Some of the conflict's bloodiest battles were fought in Fallujah when U.S. forces faced off against insurgents and four U.S. contractors were attacked. Their charred bodies were dragged through the streets.

In Dec. 2003, Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. troops, who found him hiding in an underground hole. He would be tried by an Iraqi tribunal and found guilty of crimes against humanity and was executed in December 2006. What wasn't found in Iraq were active weapons of mass destructions, or WMDs, something many in the Bush administration had stated Saddam Hussein had at his disposal.

President Bush addressed the issue during a 2005 speech.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: When we made the decision to go into Iraq, many intelligence agencies around the world judged that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. This judgment was shared by the intelligence agencies of governments who didn't support my decision to remove Saddam. And it is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong.

JUDY WOODRUFF: A report released this month put the cost of Iraq's reconstruction at more than $60 billion dollars so far, that on top of $1.7 trillion in estimated war costs, according to a recent study by Brown University.

Today, some Baghdad residents spoke of little progress and expressed anger at the United States.

WOMAN: The Americans didn't do anything when they came to Iraq. They granted freedom to Iraq? What freedom are they talking about?

JUDY WOODRUFF: In Washington, President Obama issued a statement marking the anniversary, saying he joined in paying tribute to all who served and sacrificed in one of our nation's longest wars.

Earlier, I spoke to Jane Arraf, a reporter for Al Jazeera English and The Christian Science Monitor about today's violence in Baghdad and life in post-war Iraq.

Welcome, Jane.

What is known about who or what's behind today's car bombings and suicide attacks?

JANE ARRAF, Al Jazeera: Well, the finger, Judy, is always pointed at al-Qaida and al-Qaida-linked groups, because they do -- the attacks do have the fingerprints of that sort of organization.

It was an extremely coordinated attack, as you saw, more than 20 bombs, many of them car bombs. And then for good measure, they threw in some suicide bombers, as well as sticky bombs on the bottoms of buses, huge variety of targets, most of them Shia targets or security targets. And that fits in with what al-Qaida has been doing, trying to destabilize the country by showing people that its security forces can't protect them and trying to stir up the sectarian war that this country has just recently emerged from.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How unusual is it to have so many attacks on the same day?

JANE ARRAF: It was a bad day. That is certainly indisputable.

But I was at a university during the day talking to university students and they were actually holding a party because they were graduating. You could see the smoke rising and you could hear gunfire and these are people, young Iraqis who grew up in war. And they were so unfazed by it. They just went on with their day. They went to classes. They went to their ceremonies.

So people here, Iraqis have learned to live with this, which is a very sad comment. But, at the same time, what happened today did scare people a little bit. I think probably you will see fewer people on the streets in the next couple of days.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Jane, tell us what are conditions like in Iraq now? What is day-to-day life like for ordinary Iraqis?

JANE ARRAF: It's a lot better than it was a few years ago.

But I think we have to keep mentioning, that was such a low bar, because we always say it's a lot better than it was a few years ago. Well, a few years ago, there were bodies in the streets. A few years ago, you literally when you left your house didn't know whether you would return home.

A few years ago, there are families who lost people whose bodies they never found. So there's a bit of a sense of relief that that is not happening. And because it was so bad, people kind of get on with their lives here. If you go down one of the main streets, one of the main commercial streets at night, you probably will have to wait to get into a restaurant.

There's so many families going out. But, at the same time, you can go into places here. A couple of days ago, I went and saw someone on the edge of town in a neighborhood where there is hardly any electricity.

There's no sewage system. The kids don't go to school because there's no school there. And that's not that unusual.

This is potentially a hugely rich country, but you wouldn't know it when you walk through the streets. Somehow, around the edges, people have found a way to make it seem as if some semblance of normal life goes on, but they realize that this isn't normal. They realize that it could be so much better.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, finally, Jane, what are people saying there about the war?

JANE ARRAF: That's such a question -- that's such an individual question.

And the answer to that -- and I ask it constantly with that underlying question, was it worth it? And the answer to that depends on what happened to each person, what happened to each family. There are a lot of people here, probably a majority of people, who are still very glad that Saddam Hussein is gone. But what I have found increasingly in covering this country over the years and being here day to day is that people are more and more saying, yes, it's great he was gone, but maybe we would have put up with him for the sake of the certainty of knowing that our kids would be OK when they go to school.

Really, what happened was that people traded the oppression that they were under for freedom in a sense, but that freedom came with a lot of danger that they face every day. There was no fuss made about the anniversary. People here don't really commemorate anniversaries like that, unless they're politicians.

But when people think back on the last 10 years, it is a history of loss, of sadness. Young people are in a bit of a different frame of mind. They didn't lose quite so much. And when you talk to them, they're looking forward towards the future and they're generally more optimistic. It's their elders that look back over the past 10 years, over the past few decades and think of the tragedy of what this country could have been that it wasn't and still isn't -- Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Jane Arraf joining us from Baghdad, thank you.

JANE ARRAF: Thank you.

GWEN IFILL: We will come back to the legacy of the Iraq war at the end of the program tonight.

Ten Years Later: Was Iraq a War of 'Choice' or of 'Necessity'?

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 16:22:00 EDT

Marines pull down the statue of Saddam Hussein in the centre of Baghdad, April 9, 2003. Photo by Mirrorpix/Getty Images.

PBS NewsHour is marking the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War with an online campaign. We're collecting your experiences, impressions, and viewpoints on the war and all that came with it. Where were you when you learned of the invasion into Iraq? How would you describe these past ten years to someone else? Share your story here and join the @NewsHour discussion on Twitter with #Iraq10.

The first chords of the Iraq War struck on March 19, 2003, in the form of airstrikes on Saddam Hussein's presidential palace in Baghdad. There was no formal "declaration" of war, but President George W. Bush had made clear two evenings earlier in an address to the nation; Saddam had to go.

"It is too late for Saddam Hussein to remain in power. It is not too late for the Iraqi military to act with honor and protect your country by permitting the peaceful entry of coalition forces to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. Our forces will give Iraqi military units clear instructions on actions they can take to avoid being attacked and destroyed. I urge every member of the Iraqi military and intelligence services, if war comes, do not fight for a dying regime that is not worth your own life."

Invasion followed. Approximately 300,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines, along with British and other forces, fought through vigorous resistance from large groups of well-armed Iraqi troops and smaller groups of paramilitaries like the Fedayeen Saddam. The coalition raced to the capital and Baghdad fell April 9. The Iraqi leader, now dislodged from power after 24 years, had slipped into hiding. Marines toppled a statue of Hussein in Firdos Square, one of the iconic images of the war.

Set in motion was an eight-year commitment of military forces and billions of dollars to a cause many believed noble at the outset -- but lost the heart for over time. As liberation became occupation, became insurgency and then a new front in the terror fight, Americans' support for the war waned.

Underneath it all was the argument that remains today: was the Iraq War a "war of choice," or a war of necessity? As the military buildup proceeded apace in the desert of Kuwait and other places, Congress, U.N. member countries and NATO, all debated that question and the justifications provided by the Bush administration at the time.

Sanctions long in place since the Gulf War had prevented Saddam Hussein from restarting a nuclear program. U.S. forces once in control of the country found only old and abandoned chemical weapons -- not some stockpile ready for use by terrorists.

None of that mattered very much to the Iraqis I met when I covered the war for ABC News in June and July 2003. I found the people grateful for liberation and hopeful toward the future, but they were starting to tire of so many foreign troops on their streets, stopping cars at checkpoints and conducting night raids. President Bush had declared victory in May that year after landing a military plane himself on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. The full-throated insurgency had not yet set in, and when it did, it consumed the Iraqi people. Sectarian violence roiled the country for years as Sunni and Shia Muslims fought each other for control of their country.

American forces came home in December 2011. 4,487 troops had given their lives and nearly 40,000 were wounded. Of the Iraqis, the surveys vary but agree that at least 100,000 civilians died in the war and strife. Iraqis have a government of their own choosing, and the rights afforded citizens in a democracy, but the struggle for safer, better lives goes on.

Share your viewpoint on the onset and aftermath of the Iraq War here and join the discussion with @NewsHour on Twitter using #Iraq10.

Survivors Share Experiences of Sexual Assault in the Military

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 18:47:00 EDT

JUDY WOODRUFF: Finally tonight, we return to the issue of sexual assaults in the military.

Earlier today, victims testified before Congress about what they went through and the changes they think need to be made in the armed forces.

Women in combat zones are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by the enemy. But of the nearly 4,000 reports of sexual assault in the military last year, only 191 defendants were convicted at courts-martial. And because very few victims actually come forward, the real number of cases is estimated at 19,000.

Those numbers from the Pentagon have fixed new attention on the problem, with stories in The New York Times and Rolling Stone magazine on rape survivors, and the Oscar-nominated documentary "The Invisible War," filled with testimonials from military veterans who were sexually assaulted.

TANDY FINK, U.S. Army: I reported it two different times to my squad leader. And he told me that there was nothing he can do about it because they didn't have any proof.

TIA CHRISTOPHER, U.S. Army: And they took me before my lieutenant commander. He says, do you think this is funny? And I said, what do you mean? He's like, is this all a joke to you? I was like, what do you mean' And he goes, you're the third girl to report rape this week. Are you guys like all in cahoots? You think this is a game.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Today, a Senate Armed Services subcommittee took up the issue, starting with Anu Bhagwati of the Service Women's Action Network.

ANU BHAGWATI, Service Women's Action Network: During my five years as a Marine officer, I experienced daily discrimination and sexual harassment. I was exposed to a culture rife with sexism, rape jokes, pornography, and widespread commercial sexual exploitation of women and girls both in the United States and overseas.

JUDY WOODRUFF: From there, the panel heard first-hand accounts from victims, both women and men.

BriGette McCoy is a former Army specialist.

FORMER SPC. BRIGETTE MCCOY, U.S. Army: I'm a Gulf War era service-connected disabled veteran. I was raped during military service and during my first assignment. That was 1988. I was 18 years old. It was two weeks before my 19th birthday.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Former Navy Petty Officer Brian Lewis also appeared, said to be the first male victim of military rape to testify before Congress.

FORMER PO3 BRIAN LEWIS, U.S. Navy: During my tour on the USS Frank Cable, I was raped by a superior noncommissioned officer. I was ordered by my command not to report this crime.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Rebekah Havrilla, a former Army sergeant, said she didn't report her rape initially, and then:

FORMER SGT. REBEKAH HAVRILLA, U.S. Army: Approximately a year after separating from active duty, I was on orders for job training. And during that time, I ran into my rapist in a post store. He recognized me and told me that he was stationed on same installation. I was so re-traumatized from the unexpectedness of seeing him that I removed myself from training and immediately sought out assistance from an Army chaplain, who told me, among other things, that the rape was God's will and that God was trying to get my attention so that I would go back to church.

Six months later, a friend called me and told me they had found pictures of me online that my perpetrator had taken during my rape. At that point, I felt that my rape was always going to haunt me unless I did something about it. So, I went to Army Criminal Investigation Division, CID, and a full investigation was completed.

The initial CID interview was the most humiliating thing that I have ever experienced. I had to relive the entire event for over four hours with a male CID agent who I have never met and explain to him repeatedly exactly what was going on in each of the pictures.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, chairing the subcommittee, got a mixed response when she asked if an outside prosecutor would help in reporting crimes by moving the process outside the chain of command.

BRIAN LEWIS: An independent prosecutor would have made a world of difference. It would have gotten -- it would have gotten the reporting outside the chain of command and not enabled my commanding officer to sweep this under the rug.

REBEKAH HAVRILLA: Had I actually gone through with a full investigation while serving, I still would have had to live with many of the men who were abusive towards me. And that was -- that's not anything that I would have ever wanted to go through, independent prosecutor aside. The challenge is partially changing the culture within the military of how women are viewed.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Later, Defense Department officials acknowledged the military culture must change.

Maj. Gen. Gary Patton directs the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office.

MAJ. GEN. GARY PATTON, Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office: Underpinning all efforts is a need for enduring culture change, requiring leaders at all levels to foster a command climate from top to bottom where sexist behavior, sexual harassment and sexual assault are not tolerated, condoned, or ignored.

I believe we will know changes occurred when prevention of sexual assault is as closely scrutinized as a prevention of a fratricide or friendly-fire. We will changes occur know sexist behavior and derogatory language produce the same viscerally offensive reaction as hearing a racist slur. We are not there yet.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The new defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, promised stronger leadership on the issue at his confirmation hearing.

DEFENSE SECRETARY CHUCK HAGEL, United States: It's not good enough just to say zero tolerance. The whole chain of command needs to be accountable for this all the way down.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Hagel has already ordered a review of an Air Force general's decision to overturn a sexual assault conviction against an officer who served in Italy.

House Moves Up Vote on Spending Bill as Snowstorm Bears Down on DC

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 08:58:00 EDT

House Speaker John Boehner answers reporters' questions after the weekly House Republican caucus meeting at the Capitol Tuesday. With the budget sequester now in effect, Boehner and his party in the House are now focused on fighting against new taxes and rolling back the federal budget. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

"Never put off to tomorrow what you can do today," Thomas Jefferson once wrote.

House Republicans will heed that 202-year-old bit of advice from the founding father and hold a vote Wednesday afternoon on their stopgap measure to keep the federal government funded past March 27. The legislation, which seeks to remove the prospect of a potentially calamitous government shutdown, locks in post-sequester spending levels, but includes protections for defense and veterans programs.

GOP leaders originally scheduled the vote for Thursday, but moved it up a day over concerns about the snowstorm that was expected to hit the Washington area on Wednesday.

House Speaker John Boehner expressed confidence Tuesday that the bill would pass.

"Spending is the problem here in Washington, and our goal is to cut spending -- not to shut the government down," Boehner told reporters. "The president agreed last week that that should be our goal and I'm hopeful that this continuing resolution will find easy passage both in the House and the Senate."

House Democratic leaders signaled Tuesday that they would not launch a full-scale effort against the measure. "We're not whipping at this point in time," House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters. "We don't want to shut down the government."

The Obama administration, meanwhile, issued a statement that said it was "deeply concerned" about the impact of the GOP legislation, which funds the government for just six months, but did not threaten a presidential veto. It cited concerns about effects to consumer protections and health care services.

"The Administration looks forward to working with the Congress to refine the legislation to address these concerns," the statement said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said his chamber would attempt to move it's own plan to fund the government next week. Reid added that he was "cautiously optimistic" about reaching a compromise in the coming weeks, but indicated Democrats would want to have a say in the composition of the continuing resolution, or CR. "I'm anxious to see what the House is going to pass with the CR. We have a pretty good idea now, but we'll wait and see what the final product is," Reid said.

"We believe, that this being a bicameral legislature, that we also have a right to have some appropriation bills and that we also have the right to have some anomalies. That's what we're going to be focusing on," Reid added.

Which means, as is the case with most battles on Capitol Hill, the devil is in the details. With the consequences of failing to reach an agreement on funding the government far more immediate and wide-ranging than with the sequester, there will be added pressure on lawmakers to figure out a way to meet their next deadline.

On PBS NewsHour Tuesday, Ray Suarez talked Todd Zwillich of PRI's "The Takeaway" about the continuing resolution and what's next in the process.

Zwillich said he's watching to see how many in the GOP's rank-and-file join their leader to vote for this plan, or if it's another measure that passes without a majority of the majority's support: "There likely won't be a majority of Republicans to prevent a government shutdown. John Boehner will have to rely on Nancy Pelosi to provide the votes." (Roll Call reports Wednesday that Boehner privately told his caucus he won't let this trend keep up. "[It's] not a practice that I would expect to continue long term," the speaker told reporters after meeting with members.)

Watch the segment here or below:

Watch Video

A CONSERVATIVE'S VISION

Judy Woodruff interviewed Virginia's Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli about his book, "The Last Line of Defense: The New Fight for American Liberty." The gubernatorial candidate outlined his philosophy for governing, including why he thinks the founding fathers got some things wrong. They discussed health care reform and his take on global warming.

On politics, Cuccinelli said he is in the "mainstream."

Asked about Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling's possible entry into the race as an "independent Republican," Cucinelli closed on a note of compromise. "We have a lot to appeal to everyone with, and I have not met a human being yet that I don't agree with on some things," he said.

Watch the conversation here or below:

Watch Video

And watch the online portion of the conversation here or below:

LINE ITEMS

The Washington Post examines the politics behind Jeb Bush's immigration backtrack and also found that Republican senators pushing for a comprehensive bill with a pathway to citizenship say they are not deterred.

The Hill looks at a new pro-immigration reform super PAC that could target opponents of a comprehensive plan.

A new ABC/Washington Post poll finds strong overall public support for the budgetary cuts of the kind delivered by Friday's sequester, but strong opposition, by nearly the same 2-1 margin, to the 8 percent across-the-board reduction in military spending.

John Brennan's nomination to lead the CIA cleared the Senate Intelligence Committee by a 12-3 vote Tuesday. The full Senate will hold a vote likely on Thursday.

Sounds like Budget Chairman Paul Ryan is re-thinking proposing changes to the Medicare eligibility age.

White House tours are the latest victims of the sequester.

Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., praised Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez upon his death Tuesday.

Disgraced ex-Rep. Bob Ney goes after Boehner in a new book, The Hill reports.

After the fizzling of the story about Sen. Bob Menendez and prostitutes, The Washington Post profiles the Daily Caller's "put-up-your-dukes attitude" that made it a "rising star among the new Washington media, particularly the conservative kind."

Politico's Dylan Byers tracks the complicated ins and outs of the story.

Add Donald Trump to the list of CPAC speakers. But Gov. Bob McDonnell, D-Va., joins New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie among the GOP elected officials not getting an invite to this year's gathering.

The Democratic National Committee tweaks House Republicans on the sequester.

Ahead of South Dakota Sen. Tim Johnson's expected retirement announcement later this month, Republicans are pouncing on the possibility that his son, Attorney General Brendan Johnson, will jump in the race, throwing charges of nepotism. Democrats, however, aren't yet sure Johnson's lack of a voting record makes him the stronger candidate over former Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, who faces her own charges of nepotism.

The New York Times' Jennifer Steinhauer bites into the lunchroom that is Capitol Hill, writing of an encounter with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell at the Dirksen cafeteria's international station, "but a reporter who runs into him is not fooled into thinking that he will be inclined to make small talk; he will almost certainly regard her as a raccoon he just discovered in the attic, and glance around for someone to dispose of her."

PolitiFact checks Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts' comments during the Voting Rights Act arguments that compared Mississippi and Massachusetts voter turnout.

What could be better than following They Might Be Giants' John Linnell around on an eating tour of New York?

Going to South by Southwest? Check out all the cool things PBS is doing at the annual interactive festival in Austin. And don't miss Christina's Monday panel about partisan media.

Today's tidbit from NewsHour partner Face the Facts USA runs down stats on Social Security beneficiaries.

NEWSHOUR ROUNDUP

The NewsHour examined a post-Hugo Chavez Venezuela. And here is a photo essay of his life.

Jenny Marder and Rebecca Jacobson look at how sequestration affects science for the latest Lunch in the Lab.

We looked at an all-time high for the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

TOP TWEETS

#Vatican spokesman says that no date has been set yet for the conclave.
— Rachel Donadio -- NYT (@RachelDonadio) March 6, 2013

If you haven't tweeted a pic of the lack of snow outside your window, don't worry, you still have time.
— FamousDC (@FamousDC) March 6, 2013

White House cancels daily press briefing due to #snowquester
— David Nakamura (@DavidNakamura) March 6, 2013

The whole nation is braced for an arctic blast of piss poor, unwanted news coverage of light to moderate snowfall in Washington, DC
— Steve Mort (@mobilemort) March 5, 2013

Seques-tour is a pun I can support. Snowquester - still terrible.
— Brendan Buck (@Brendan_Buck) March 5, 2013

Behind the scenes in #SXSWedu panel 10:30 Salon E 30 minutes till showtime #iamsrl @newshourextra twitter.com/lclap/status/3...
— leah clapman (@lclap) March 5, 2013

Twitter's fun once people leave the White House twitter.com/stefanjbecket/...
— Stefan Becket (@stefanjbecket) March 5, 2013

Katelyn Polantz and Simone Pathe contributed to this report.

For more political coverage, visit our politics page.

Questions or comments? Email Christina Bellantoni at cbellantoni-at-newshour-dot-org.

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Bradley Manning Leaked Classified Documents to Spark 'Debate' on Foreign Policy

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 18:14:00 EDT

JUDY WOODRUFF: Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private who is charged with leaking massive amounts of classified material to the Web site WikiLeaks, entered guilty pleas today.

He pleaded guilty to 10 of the 22 charges against him, admitting to violating military regulations, but not federal espionage laws. Manning spoke for more than an hour in the military courtroom, explaining his reasons for leaking classified information.

He said -- quote -- "I believe that if the general public had access to the information, this could spark a domestic debate as to the role of the military and foreign policy in general." He added -- quote -- "I felt I accomplished something that would allow me to have a clear conscience."

Later in the day, the judge accepted Manning's pleas. He still faces trial on the remaining charges.

For more now on Manning's statement, his pleas and what comes next, we are joined by Charlie Savage of The New York Times, who was in the courtroom today, and Arun Rath, who has been covering the Manning case for PBS' FRONTLINE.

Welcome to both of you to the NewsHour.

Charlie Savage, what exactly, tell us, did Private Manning plead guilty to today?

CHARLIE SAVAGE, The New York Times: Pvt. Manning pled guilty to 10 charges that all -- basically, he took responsibility for being the person who indeed downloaded massive archives of military reports about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, videos of airstrikes that killed civilians, dossiers about Guantanamo detainees, and a host of other issues, and sent them to WikiLeaks.

Indeed, he said he took responsibility; it was him who did that. And he pled guilty to 10 specifications of violating military rules and regulations in the course of doing so. What he didn't do was say that those charges amount to the ferocious charges the government had brought against him, including aiding the enemy and violating the Espionage Act.

The charges that he pled guilty to could expose him to up to 20 years in prison. If the government goes forward with the larger charges that are still on the table, it could be many, many more decades on that.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Arun Rath, help us understand what he didn't plead guilty to today.

ARUN RATH, FRONTLINE: Well, not pleading guilty to the main -- the biggest charge, which is aiding the enemy, that is huge. At least, that's the one that carries potentially the life sentence for him.

And it seems like what they're trying to do is kind of peel away the leak from the criminality of it, from trying to say that he was trying to hurt the country. And that was a big part of the statement that he made today justifying what he did.

He made a big point of saying that he didn't want to release any information that would damage the United States. He said he found information that he thought would be embarrassing, but not damaging. And they're trying to sort of play that on those terms, I think.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Charlie Savage, what did you take away from watching from him today as he read his statements, as he gave his explanation? What did you see?

CHARLIE SAVAGE: Well, he was sitting at a -- I was watching from the media center, which is sort of a filing center close to the courtroom. It has a closed caption circuit feed. And most of the reporters were there today.

And he was sitting before the judge next to his lawyers. He's sort of a small person. And he was reading from the -- this prepared statement, this lengthy prepared statement that was basically his narrative, his statement at last about why he did what he did. For a few years now, ever since this book, we have about him and his mental troubles, his struggles with his sexuality, his suicidal periods and the abuse that he may have received in prison once he was locked up.

And there's been all these surrounding conversations. And this was the moment after all these years in which he was able to say, here's what I did and here's why. And his message was squarely that he was a whistle-blower, didn't use that term, but as he marched through the narrative of how he came to download these documents just for his own work as a military analyst in Iraq, and then as he became troubled by what he was seeing, and he thought that what the American people needed to know if these documents came out would spark -- would be enlightening, would spark a massive conversation about foreign policy and about what the government is doing.

And so he decided to find a way to bring them to light.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Arun Rath, both of you have followed this case for a long time. What -- I mean, just listening, reading what he was saying today, what did you take away from that? Were you surprised? Did it -- was it consistent with what you have been told until now?

ARUN RATH: For me, it was remarkable actually we're now hearing Bradley Manning's voice very loudly and strongly and very articulately.

Charlie mentioned that we had barely heard him talk. Before he testified in November for the first time, the only time I had heard Bradley Manning's voice was on -- in the background on a 911 call where he's almost hysterical, a 911 call back involving his stepmother.

In court back in November, I have to say he was one of the most -- just in terms of a witness, one of the most appealing, articulate witnesses that took the stand. He seemed like a very appealing young man, very articulate. And from what we heard today, what Charlie described, it sounds like he gave a very methodical, thoughtful presentation, almost a manifesto about why he did what he did and why it was morally the correct thing to do.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Charlie Savage, I guess I'm asking you to give us your own judgment on this, but was it an explanation that held together, that made sense to you?

CHARLIE SAVAGE: Well, I think it was a very coherent presentation about what he was thinking and why he did it and how he sort of got deeper and deeper into sending this information into WikiLeaks, finding other information that he also wanted to send to WikiLeaks, becoming frustrated when WikiLeaks didn't publish some of the things that he was sending to them.

I would say this, although, that was also interesting, because he was doing this in the context of a confession. He was pleading guilty. And he was saying, “I am guilty of these charges. They may not be as bad as what the government is trying to charge me with, but they are still charges that could send me away for 20 years.”

And so there was a very interesting exchange throughout with the judge after he finished reading the statement, and there was sort of a break, and they came back, in which she was making sure that he understood what he was doing, and was sort of probing his thinking.

And at one point -- or actually several points -- she sort of circled back to this, if you're saying that you had this motivation, you're doing for this for the greater good, how can you say that and square it with the fact that you're pleading guilty to crimes that you say you did the wrong thing?

And he several times said back to her, well, look, I understand now that I was a specialist, now a private in the Army, that even -- whatever my own judgment was about these documents, there are procedures and processes for bringing things to light or keeping them secret. It's not up to me. I did not have the authority. It was above my pay grade to just sort of take these massive archives and fling them into the world.

And so he was accepting responsibility and saying it was wrong. At the same time, he was saying, as Arun said, I wasn't trying to hurt the country. I did not think any of these documents would harm the United States or help a foreign power. I may have been wrong, but what I was trying to do was spark a national debate.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Just very quickly, Arun, finally to you, there is the trial on the remaining charges that will be coming up. Any sense from today of what we will hear from him then?

ARUN RATH: Well, I think we definitely have seen a very real preview of what the strategy is going to be, which is, as we have said, they're admitting the crime, essentially, but are going to try to justify it on moral grounds.

So they're going to give some amount of ground. The argument will not be whether or not Bradley Manning leaked. We know he leaked. And he's now -- the argument is going to be about whether or not he was justified in doing it. Or that's at least the argument that the defense would like to have.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Arun Rath and Charlie Savage, we thank you both.

CHARLIE SAVAGE: Thank you.

ARUN RATH: Thank you.

Did Embattled Confirmation Process Weaken New Defense Secretary Hagel?

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 18:17:00 EDT

JUDY WOODRUFF: The United States Senate ended a contentious fight over a key presidential nomination today, and confirmed former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel to be the next secretary of defense.

SEN. HARRY REID, D-Nev., Majority Leader: Twelve days later, nothing, nothing has changed. Twelve days later, Senator Hagel's exemplary record of service to his country remains untarnished.

JUDY WOODRUFF: In short, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, Chuck Hagel should have been confirmed before the President's Day recess. At the time, the Senate's 55 Democrats could not get the 60 votes needed to end a Republican filibuster against fellow Republican Hagel. Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois condemned the GOP opposition today.

SEN. RICHARD DURBIN, D-Ill., Majority Whip: There's no question that there are some who bear some negative feelings toward Chuck Hagel because of his independence and some of his votes in the past, even his support of President Obama in the last presidential election. But this has been taken to a level that I never expected.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Still, Mississippi's Roger Wicker and other Republicans charged again that Hagel is too willing to compromise with Iran and too willing to criticize Israel.

SEN. ROGER WICKER, R-Miss.: Either we should disregard everything that the senator has said and stood for as merely hyperbole, or this is a nominee with a very unsettling and naive world view. You can't have it both ways.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Just five days ago, 15 Republican senators wrote to President Obama, asking him to withdraw the Hagel nomination. But on Sunday, Arizona Senator John McCain said President Obama's choice deserved an up-or-down vote.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, R-Ariz.: I do not believe that Chuck Hagel, who is a friend of mine, is qualified to be secretary of defense. But I do believe that elections have consequences.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Today, 18 GOP senators joined with Democrats to end the filibuster. Hours later, the Senate confirmed Hagel 58-41, mainly along party lines.

For more, we turn to Mark Thompson, Time magazine's national security reporter.

Welcome back to the program.

So, after all the storm and the fury from Republicans, enough of them voted to let this -- this confirmation takes place. What was this all about?

MARK THOMPSON, Deputy Bureau Chief and Pentagon Correspondent, TIME: Well, basically, it was on Valentine's Day that the Senate wouldn't let this proceed to an up-or-down vote.

And, instead, basically, the Republicans were looking for something to derail the nomination, so for 12 days the nation waited, essentially. Leon Panetta was running over to NATO and back to his walnut farm. We really didn't have a true secretary of defense, other than this lame duck.

Today, finally, the Republicans decided, hey, we have waited this long. We can't wait any longer. The president does deserve an up-or-down vote on his candidate to run the Pentagon, and so they let it proceed.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But, meantime, they sent a message.

MARK THOMPSON: Yes, I mean, it is a disconcerting message.

We had the Republican and the Democratic whips talking about vote counts, but, you know, foreign nations and people in the Pentagon can count votes too. We have never had a defense secretary with this many opposing votes. Now, this is something he can shake off, but it's going to take some time.

JUDY WOODRUFF: That's right.

I mean, he has the fewest confirming votes of any defense secretary since the job was created. Mark Thompson, how does that affect his ability to do his job?

MARK THOMPSON: Well, it will depend.

It will affect it in a big way if he acts as he did at his confirmation hearing, which by all accounts he didn't do well. Conversely, I talked to people in the Pentagon. And the lower in ranks you go, the more they like this guy, the more they like the sense that an enlisted man is going to run the building.

And if he can use that as a springboard, he's facing immense challenges from sequestration to Afghanistan to a nuclear Iran, but it's an opportunity for him to seize the moment. And if he does, people will forget this pretty quickly, I think.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What about, though, the sour relations or whatever lingering effect there is from this loud vote of no confidence from Republicans in the Senate? Does that affect his ability to do his job?

MARK THOMPSON: Yes, I think the important thing for people to realize is it's a perceptions game. And if he lets it bother him, it will. But, conversely, if he doesn't and if he moves on out, I mean, senators today were talking -- some were saying, this will wound him, like Sen. Graham of South Carolina.

And others like the chairman of the committee, Sen. Levin, said, no, it won't. We're all about tomorrow. We don't focus that much on the past. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. It will affect him. But if he achieves escape velocity, it will be because of his own efforts.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, from talking to folks in the Pentagon, and you were just telling me he's had a -- been working out of an office there, which is typical for folks who are nominated for that position. Is there an early sense of how they think he's prepared to handle this job?

MARK THOMPSON: I think, just like the lawmakers, no one knows, because we have had defense secretaries who have come from the Hill who have done very well, Dick Cheney being the most recent example, Leon Panetta.

And then we have had folks like Les Aspin, who came from the Hill, who people thought would do real well and who really didn't. You can't tell. It takes about six months before you realize whether or not this person has got the moxie for the job.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And when you say do well, what's the measuring stick here?

MARK THOMPSON: The measuring is grappling with the cuts that are coming this Friday.

The question is, how smoothly can we withdraw from Afghanistan without being bit on our way out, and dealing with Iran. I think those are the three big issues he's facing today.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark Thompson, national security reporter for Time, thank you very much.

MARK THOMPSON: Thank you, Judy.

Obama Visits Virginia Shipyard to Put Sequester Squeeze on GOP

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 08:56:00 EDT

President Obama will visit Newport News Shipbuilding, the largest manufacturing employer in Virginia, Tuesday. Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

President Obama will visit a Virginia shipyard Tuesday to warn of the negative consequences from automatic spending cuts set to take effect later this week, in a bid to pressure congressional Republicans to accept a deal to replace the sequester that includes a mix of revenues and reductions.

The visit to Newport News Shipbuilding, the largest manufacturing employer in Virginia, is the latest in a series of public calls by the Obama administration to rally support behind what it has framed as a "balanced" approach to averting the $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts.

But as of Monday, House Republicans remained unmoved by the effort. "The president says we have to have another tax increase in order to avoid the sequester," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters at a Capitol Hill press availability. "Well, Mr. President, you got your tax increase. It's time to cut spending here in Washington."

Boehner also countered that job creation could be stifled if lawmakers fail to address the country's deficit. "If we don't solve this spending problem here in Washington, there will be tens of millions of jobs in the future that won't happen because of the debt load that's happening on the backs of our kids and grandkids. I came here to save the American dream for my kids and yours. This debt problem and the president's addition to spending is threatening their future."

House Republicans appeared set to move forward with a plan that would leave the sequester in place, but give the president greater flexibility to determine where the cuts are made.

The New York Times' Jonathan Weisman and Michael Shear explain the strategy behind the GOP's move:

Seeking to shift responsibility for the cuts to Mr. Obama and to defang attacks by the White House, Republicans were expected to unveil legislation on Tuesday that they said would mitigate some of the biggest concerns. The measure would let agencies and departments cull programs that were long ago proved to be ineffective, and would make sure critical federal functions like air traffic control and meat inspection were spared.

But White House budget officials are leery. If Congress grants the White House the authority to protect air traffic controllers, Border Patrol agents and national parks, the administration's carefully devised high-pressure campaign that has been mounting for weeks could deflate. Moreover, the White House would take on the responsibility of deciding which programs to protect and which to expose -- and the political consequences that go with that.

But White House officials aren't alone in expressing skepticism about the House GOP's tactics.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called the approach "a complete cop-out" during an appearance Monday on CNN.

"We will criticize everything he does," Graham said. "We'll say it's to make it easier for you, but every decision he'll make we'll criticize. To me, this is a bipartisan problem."

Graham, who is scheduled to meet with the president at the White House on Tuesday to discuss immigration reform, said he hoped budget issues would also be on the agenda. "Now is the time to grow up. Both parties need to grow up. We need to find a chance to do the big deal. I'll challenge the president: Mr. President, let's do things that will straighten out the long-term indebtedness of the country. Stop talking about between March and October. Talk about the next 30 years."

But for Tuesday, at least, the president's focus will likely remain on the more immediate crisis, and using the Newport News stop to squeeze Republicans politically, even as he is joined by one member of the House GOP Conference, Rep. Scott Rigell of Virginia. The shipyard sits in Rigell's home district.

A White House official said the large Virginia employer's plight "illustrates how these indiscriminate, across the board cuts would have potentially harmful effects industry wide, impacting jobs, economic demand and our military readiness" and highlighted the state-by-state details released over the weekend.

In Virginia alone, approximately 90,000 civilian Department of Defense employees would be furloughed if the sequester was to hit, reducing gross pay by around $648.4 million in total.

As well, it would cancel the maintenance of 11 ships in Norfolk, defer four projects at Dahlgren, Oceana, and Norfolk, and delay other modernization and demolition projects.

The Washington Post curtain-raises the president's visit with a look at anxiety in shipyards across the region.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal labeled Mr. Obama's actions "political theater" and that the president is "trying to scare the American people," reports NewsHour's Kwame Holman, who was at the White House Monday as the nation's governors met with the president.

And as the president faces intensified GOP criticism for campaign-style events, the Rothenberg Political Report's Stu Rothenberg gets to the nitty gritty in his column for Roll Call: could it all about trying to win back the House for Democrats in 2014?

He writes that it's "far too early to know whether Democrats will have some, or even any, chance to win back the House next year; candidate recruitment has just begun, the number of retirements (and open seats) is uncertain and the president's popularity more than 20 months from now is an open question."

"Going back to the election of 1862, the only time the president's party gained as many as 10 seats was, well, never. Even in 1934, the best showing by the president's party in House elections since the Civil War, the president's party gained only nine seats," Rothenberg wrote.

On the NewsHour Monday, Ray Suarez and Judy Woodruff examined both the practical and political motives behind Mr. Obama's actions. Judy spoke with Weisman and Margaret Talev of Bloomberg News to get perspectives from both Congress and the White House.

Watch the segment here or below:

Watch Video

DAILY DOWNLOAD

The Daily Download segment exploring how the digital world affects not just politics, but the culture we live in, on Monday focused on the president circumventing the traditional press to speak directly to everyday citizens.

Christina Bellantoni discussed the phenomenon with Howard Kurtz and Lauren Ashburn from Daily Download, and the trio walked through the White House usage of Google Plus to "hang out" with people and answer a range of questions journalists might not ask, or at least not in the same way.

Consider this stat superstar historian Michael Beschloss shared with us Monday: President Franklin Roosevelt's fireside chats reached as many as 54 million people in one sitting, but he hosted just a handful of them per year.

Watch the segment here or below:

Watch Video

And you can join our conversation. Did you watch the president's Google Hangout? What would you ask him if you were on the other side of the laptop camera? Weigh in here.

The last Daily Download looked at Facebook fatigue. We solicited viewer stories about why they gave up on Facebook. Read those here.

Since the segment relaunched, we also have discussed workplace policies governing social media and Howie and Lauren interviewed Harper Reed about the Obama campaign's use of social media.

LINE ITEMS

As of Monday evening, 75 "Republican officials and influential thinkers" had signed onto an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court in support of striking down California's proposition 8.

Voters in Chicago head to the polls for primary elections Tuesday. 16 Democrats and four Republicans are vying for former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.'s seat in the strongly Democratic 2nd congressional district in Illinois. The general election is set for April 9. Politics Production Assistant Allie Morris talked with Paris Schutz of WTTW to get the lay of the land. Listen here or below.

As mentioned above, Mr. Obama invited Graham and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to meet with him at the White House Tuesday about immigration reform.

Former surgeon general C. Everett Koop, known for his stances on smoking and safe sex, has died. Catch his 1989 interview on the NewsHour here.

Politico's Alexander Burns reports that the Obama aides behind Battleground Texas go live Tuesday with the new effort.

Roll Call's Steve Dennis has a handy guide dubbed "15 things you need to know about the sequester."

The Daily Caller finds an escort who says Sen. Bob Menendez paid her for sex.

National Review reports that actress Ashley Judd, who's considering a bid for U.S. Senate in Kentucky, hasn't voted in every election. And the Daily Caller rounds up Judd's previous "bizzare" comments that could haunt her during a bid.

Progressives are running this gun control-focused spot against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky.

Christian National Leaders have written a pastoral letter to Mr. Obama and Congress asking for the budget debate to be framed in moral rather than economic terms. They asked both parties to replace poverty with opportunity.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will not be speaking at CPAC.

The 10 biggest government contractors, which collectlively spent $115 million on campaigning and lobbying in 2012, could lose $13.6 billion in government contracts because of the sequester, according to the Sunlight Foundation's calculations.

In his posthumously published memoir, Robert Bork writes that President Richard Nixon promised him the next Supreme Court vacancy after Bork complied with Nixon's order to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox in 1973, the Associated Press reports.

Hundreds from Alabama and other states are expected to converge on Capitol Hill Wednesday to participate in a rally outside the Supreme Court as it hears arguments challenging the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation is organizing "freedom riders" who will depart from the Supreme Court Wednesday and hold press conferences at federal courthouses in seven southern cities Wednesday through Friday. The riders will begin a march from Selma to Montgomery on March 3, ending with a rally at the Alabama State Capitol on March 8.

Nine Inch Nails is getting back together.

Today's tidbit from NewsHour partner Face the Facts USA: state governments earned $17.7 billion from official lotteries in 2010.

NEWSHOUR ROUNDUP

Judy waded into the cost of health care with Steven Brill, who penned Time Magazine's longest-ever cover story on the topic.

Margaret Warner interviewed Jason Horowitz from Vatican City about the pope's final days of service and the search for the man to replace him.

Ray talked with Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt., about his recent visit to Cuba and what the country could be like post-Castro.

Also on the NewsHour website, the Council on Foreign Relations provides a background report on the effects on the sequester on national security, exmaining U.S. defense spending over time and in comparison to other countries' defense budgets.

On Wednesday the Supreme Court will examine a constitutional challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The landmark case asks whether the act is still necessary and whether voters still risk disenfranchisement in certain parts of the country. The NewsHour will examine in depth the questions this case raises. And we'd like your help as we go even deeper. Get details about our Oral History project here. You can record your memory now using the button below, or call (703) 594-6PBS to share your story.

TOP TWEETS

Today is 20th anniversary of 1st attack on World Trade Center. How 9/11 museum connects the dots: nyti.ms/ZFoDUW
— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) February 26, 2013

Firefighters union airing pro-Hagel ad, just caught it on MSNBCl
— Beth Reinhard (@bethreinhard) February 26, 2013

FLOTUS to @robinroberts: "People think the grey is from his job; it's from his children." @gma
— Rick Klein (@rickklein) February 26, 2013

Hard to see this Christie-CPAC no-invite lasting...
— maggie haberman (@maggiepolitico) February 26, 2013

I'm honored to join the amazing staff @buzzfeed. I'll be covering the WH and sharing a bureau with a team that's really making moves.
— e mcmorris-santoro (@evanmc_s) February 25, 2013

Now that it's official, I can post a picture of this cake I made for @evanmc_s.Because u know...it's about me. twitter.com/ogliz/status/3...
— Liz O'Meara-Goldberg (@ogliz) February 25, 2013

Desk Assistants Simone Pathe and Sarah McHaney and Cassie M. Chew contributed to this report.

For more political coverage, visit our politics page.

Questions or comments? Email Christina Bellantoni at cbellantoni-at-newshour-dot-org.

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Despite Gloomy Urgings, No Signs of Give From Congress on Sequester

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 18:02:00 EDT