JUDY WOODRUFF: Good evening.
I'm Judy Woodruff.
On the "NewsHour" tonight: turmoil in Russia -- the latest on the diplomatic retaliation
against the West and fallout from the deadly shopping mall fire.
Then: on the front lines of cyber-warfare -- inside the U.S. military's newest combatant
command center.
COL.
PAUL CRAFT, Defense Information Systems Agency: It's not like fighting a war in another domain,
where you deploy troops, you fight, you go home.
Conflict in cyber-domain is constant.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And it's Friday.
Mark Shields and David Brooks discuss the latest turnover at the top of the Trump administration
and adding a citizenship question to the census.
Plus, Now Read This -- the latest entry in the "NewsHour" Bookshelf, a conversation with
author Mohsin Hamid on his book "Exit West."
All that and more on tonight's "PBS NewsHour."
(BREAK)
JUDY WOODRUFF: An American soldier has been killed in Northern Syria in the military campaign
against Islamic State fighters.
A British soldier died in the same roadside bomb attack.
A local Syrian official says it happened overnight in Manbij, where American troops are aiding
anti-ISIS forces.
President Trump said yesterday that the 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria will be leaving very
soon.
But the Pentagon's U.S. Central Command said that it has no information on that.
Palestinian protesters confronted Israeli troops along the Gaza border today in the
bloodiest day there since 2014.
The Palestinians said at least 15 people were killed by Israeli fire.
Reuters correspondent Nidal al-Mughrabi witnessed the violence.
He spoke with us via Skype a short while ago from Gaza City.
NIDAL AL-MUGHRABI, Reuters: We have seen lots of people, thousands, and several thousands
have started to come early to the location east of Gaza along the border with Israel.
According to the organizers, people should have stayed 700 meters away from the border,
but many, many, many of the protesters have ignored the calls of organizes to stay that
far.
People throw stones.
The Israeli responded by tear gas, live fire and rubber bullets, as well as casualties
started to fall.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Why is this happening right now?
We know that this has been a special day for the Palestinians.
What was the immediate impetus?
NIDAL AL-MUGHRABI: Every year, it's been some celebrations and some demonstrations to commemorate
the day in 1976, you know, like a loss of land.
But, this day, it was different.
Palestinian factions, including the Islamist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip,
have supported an idea to mass thousands, and, if they could, tens of thousands of people
along the border with Israel to demand the right of return.
JUDY WOODRUFF: The Israelis are accusing the Palestinians, accusing Hamas, of deliberately
sending women and children to the border, putting them at risk, in other words.
Did you see that?
NIDAL AL-MUGHRABI: The Israelis, since the morning, they have said that Hamas was exploiting
the crowds for its own purposes, in order to send civilians to be face to face with
Israeli soldiers along the border.
What happened today, you know, we have seen all -- you know, like, people from all factions,
but we have seen lots of people who are frustrated of everything.
They are frustrated of the lack of peace.
They are frustrated for the lack of any horizon.
It has made no difference to them whether they live or die because the situation in
Gaza was so terrible.
JUDY WOODRUFF: It is late at night there.
Have things calmed down?
NIDAL AL-MUGHRABI: Many -- or I can say most of the protesters have returned home.
The Palestinian president has asked for the United Nations to meet over what happened
today in Gaza.
He condemned it, and he asked the U.N. Security Council to afford the Palestinians with international
protection because of what happened.
Tomorrow, there will be a national mourning day and also strike.
So that is also another reason why we could expect more clashes.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Nidal Al-Mughrabi with Reuters, thank you very much.
NIDAL AL-MUGHRABI: You're welcome.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Christians marked Good Friday across much of the world today from Jerusalem
to the Vatican and elsewhere.
Pope Francis began services at St. Peter's Basilica by lying prostrate before the altar.
Security was heavy for the occasion.
And in the Northern Philippines, crowds gathered to witness and record as seven Roman Catholics
were nailed to crosses.
The church has tried to discourage the ritual.
Back in this country, a jury in Florida has acquitted the widow of the gunman who massacred
49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando.
Noor Salman was found not guilty of lying to the FBI and hiding her husband's extremist
beliefs.
Omar Mateen was killed by police in the 2016 Pulse nightclub attack.
Independent autopsy results raised new questions today about the police killing of Stephon
Clark in Sacramento, California.
On March 18, two officers fired 20 times at Clark, shouting that he had a gun.
It turned out to be a cell phone.
Today, Dr. Bennet Omalu, who is a pathologist hired by the family, said that eight shots
hit Clark, and seven of those were from behind.
Police had said that he was coming toward them.
DR.
BENNET OMALU, Clark Family Forensic Pathologist: The proposition that has been presented, that
he was assailing the officers, meaning he was facing the officers, is inconsistent with
the prevailing forensic evidence.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Dr. Omalu is known for his groundbreaking study of brain injuries in
pro football players.
That prompted the NFL to adopt new safety rules.
More than two dozen school districts in Kentucky closed today, when hundreds of teachers called
in sick.
They are protesting a pension overhaul adopted late last night.
It says new teachers will be not be guaranteed a set benefit amount.
This follows a teachers strike in West Virginia and threats of job actions in several other
states.
And a Russian hacker accused of attacking Silicon Valley companies is back in the United
States to face trial.
The Czech Republic extradited Yevgeniy Nikulin last night.
He's charged with hacking systems at LinkedIn, Dropbox, and other American firms.
Still to come on the "NewsHour": Russia strikes back, expelling 60 American diplomats from
the country; Atlanta the target of a large-scale cyber-attack; plus, inside the government
command center tasked with fending off hackers; and much more.
The diplomatic showdown between Russia and the United States and its Western allies intensified
this week, following the poisoning earlier this month in England of a former Russian
double agent and his daughter.
The expulsions of alleged Russian spies by more than 20 nations, and the retaliation
by Moscow, came amid a national tragedy there, last Sunday's deadly fire in Siberia.
As Nick Schifrin reports, relations between Russia and the West have reached yet another
new low.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Today, Russia tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile it claims
can elude U.S. missile defense.
But can't Russia can't elude the current crisis that's made Russia-U.S. relations more dangerous
than at any point since the Cold War.
Today, American diplomats packed their things outside the U.S. Consulate in St. Petersburg.
Russia ordered the consulate closed and expelled 60 U.S. officials in response to the U.S.
ordering Russia's Seattle consulate closed and expelling 60 Russian officials.
These are the most significant expulsions since 1986.
RONALD REAGAN, President of the United States: I have just returned from meetings in Iceland.
NICK SCHIFRIN: But unlike 1986, when President Reagan expelled Soviet diplomats and held
talks with the Soviet Union, today, the world isn't bipolar and the two sides have less
interest in cooperation.
And that makes things more difficult to solve, says Carnegie Moscow director Dmitri Trenin.
DMITRI TRENIN, Carnegie Moscow Center: For the United States, it's the fundamental Russian
behavior that needs to change.
For the Russians, however, the goal is a compromise achieved through the normal give-and-take
process.
And those two views are totally incompatible.
DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: President Putin and I have been discussing
various things.
NICK SCHIFRIN: President Trump expresses a desire to improve the relationship.
But under the Trump administration, tension has increased.
Over the Baltics, NATO jets have shadowed Russian ministers' planes and Russian jets
have rocked their wings to demonstrate they're armed.
In Ukraine, the U.S. is sending offensive weapons to soldiers fighting against Russian-backed
separatists.
And, in Syria, U.S. troops have fired on pro-Russian forces who had attacked them.
This week, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for the two sides to reduce
the risk of escalation.
ANTONIO GUTERRES, United Nations Secretary-General: It's time for precautions of these sorts guaranteeing
effective communication, guaranteeing capacity to prevent escalation.
I do believe that mechanisms of the sort are necessary again.
NICK SCHIFRIN: For Putin, the tension is an opportunity.
He's portrayed himself as the only leader strong enough to stand up to a powerful external
enemy.
But that doesn't mean he can ignore internal crises.
Earlier this week, a fire engulfed a shopping center in the Siberian town Kemerovo.
This has been a week of funerals and national mourning.
Sixty people died.
At memorial, a father remembered talking to his daughter on the phone as she tried to
escape.
MAN (through translator): I was crying to my daughter.
She said: "Dad, I love you.
I'm suffocating.
I'm losing consciousness."
NICK SCHIFRIN: The tragedy sparked mourning, but also protests.
Residents blame local officials because the mall's exists were blocked and the fire alarm
disabled.
So, Putin visited Kemerovo to pay his respects and present himself as a benevolent leader
launching an investigation.
He met with victims' families, letting them interrupt and question him.
He portrayed himself as authentic and local officials as corrupt.
VLADIMIR PUTIN, Russian President (through translator): One hundred investigators are
working on this case.
They will inspect the whole chain of command.
DMITRI TRENIN: Putin is an accomplished politician who's been very successful over the past 18
years.
But a lot of people under him, the bureaucracy, feel that they are only responsible to the
czar, that they are totally irresponsible, and can be totally irresponsible, to the population.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Putin's critics accuse him of facilitating the kind of low-level corruption
and ineffectual local governance that led to the fire.
The fire also shows the limits of Putin's control.
DMITRI TRENIN: Russia is a combination of top-down control and anarchy.
Much of the issue around Russia is not the poor management which exists on behalf of
the authorities.
It's also lawlessness and lack of responsibility among ordinary people.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Those ordinary people direct their ire at the local government, as Putin
portrays himself as confronting local corruption and simultaneously an aggressive West.
The U.S. is considering further escalation.
Russia maintains blanket denials.
Neither side wants war.
But it's not clear how they get out of the cycle of confrontation.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Nick Schifrin.
JUDY WOODRUFF: The city of Atlanta says it is slowly making progress in restoring its
computer networks.
Hari Sreenivasan explains how nine days, after a cyber-attack brought city services there
to a virtual standstill, systems are finally coming back online.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Atlanta is among the largest, but only the most recent victim of ransomware
attacks, where hackers gain entry to computers, seize files, and lock out users until a ransom
is paid.
The FBI received more than 2,600 such complaints in 2016.
A group known as SamSam is thought to be behind the Atlanta hack.
They have already extorted more than $1 million this year from some 30 organizations.
The FBI advises not to pay extortion money to hackers, saying it emboldens criminals,
and doesn't guarantee that the seized data will be returned.
Atlanta officials have not said whether they paid the $51,000 ransom demanded of them.
For more on the scope and consequences of these modern-day shakedowns, we turn to Allan
Liska, senior intelligence analyst with the security firm Recorded Future.
Thanks for joining us.
Put this Atlanta hack in perspective for us.
How significant is it?
ALLAN LISKA, Recorded Future: Thank you for having me, Hari.
It is actually pretty significant in terms of the scope of the damage.
This is, though, one of the things that the SamSam group does as part of their attack
structure.
A lot of ransomware that we see is broadly distributed, so attackers going after as many
targets as possible.
The SamSam group is a little bit different.
They study their targets, they take their time getting in, and then once they have accessed
the network, they make sure that they deploy the ransomware in a way that does the maximum
damage possible.
And Atlanta is one of the biggest targets that they have hit.
HARI SREENIVASAN: When we think of hackers, oftentimes, the stereotype by Hollywood is
a teenager sitting in their basement by themselves.
But when you talk about groups like this, is this one of the new faces of organized
crime?
ALLAN LISKA: Absolutely.
The SamSam group is well-organized.
They're well-funded.
They have carried out attacks since at least December of 2015.
They have brought in several million dollars over the last couple of years.
So it's -- I hate to use the term, but it's a thriving enterprise.
HARI SREENIVASAN: So, let's talk a little bit about Atlanta.
They have been pretty tight-lipped on exactly what's been affected.
But what kind of services, if it's not Atlanta, but other cities, are switching from paper
to digital that could fall prey to this kind of attack?
ALLAN LISKA: So, in Atlanta right now, we see this with their court system being -- having
to switch back to paper and not being able to pay fines, speeding tickets or access other
services.
This happens a lot.
When you have a group that plans their ransomware attack carefully, they will make sure that
it's disruptive.
We saw this last year with the attack on the San Francisco BART system, where an attacker
got in and installed ransomware on the fare system, so that everybody who went to go buy
the ticket saw that the systems had been infected with ransomware.
HARI SREENIVASAN: So it seems that cities and companies put up kind of firewalls to
try to keep hackers from getting in kind of directly, but it seems that the human beings
inside are the weak links.
They get an e-mail, they click on a link, and then all of a sudden the bad guys are
inside the network, so to speak.
ALLAN LISKA: In this particular case, that's not what happened, but that's the primary
distribution of ransomware is through phishing e-mails, a fake invoice, a link to a bad Web
site.
That is the primary distribution.
The good news is that type of ransomware is actually on the decline.
So we saw a big drop in that at the end of 2017, and that's continued into 2018.
Part of that is organizations are getting better at protecting themselves from that
type of ransomware.
This type of ransomware is a little bit different, because this is targeted, and this is a group
that is willing to weeks or months in order to gain access to the networks they want to
get to.
That is a much harder -- that's a much harder group to protect against.
HARI SREENIVASAN: We see this story because it's the city of Atlanta, but if you go back
and kind of search Google News, you are going to see that the Baltimore Police Department
and the fire department here in Colorado, state by state, city by city, they're experiencing
these attacks and they're kind of under the radar.
ALLAN LISKA: This is a change in tactic that we have seen over the last year or so.
So, ransomware used to be, again, widely distributed, widely attacked, but a lot of corporations
have stepped up their security and made it much more difficult for these attackers to
gain access.
However, hospitals, health care facilities, government agencies, state and local governments
specifically, don't have the resources to fully secure their systems the way some of
these other companies, you know, banks and so on, do.
So they have been more susceptible to these ransomware attacks.
They also have oftentimes a mandate to pay the ransom, because either constituent services
are being disrupted or patient services are being disrupted.
So they tend to be more likely to pay.
So they're good targets because they will often pay.
And they're, I don't want to say easy targets, but because their security teams tend to be
stretched thinner, there's more -- a bad guy is more likely to find a mistake.
HARI SREENIVASAN: All right, Allan Liska, senior intelligence analyst at Recorded Future,
thanks so much.
ALLAN LISKA: Thank you.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Stay with us.
Coming up on the "NewsHour": Mark Shields and David Brooks analyze another Trump Cabinet
shakeup; author Mohsin Hamid answers your questions about his newest book, "Exit West";
and the accountant who got to play in the National Hockey League.
But, returning to the murky world of cyber-attacks, and defense, the newest U.S. military command
is responsible not for a piece of land or air, but cyberspace.
Special correspondent Mike Cerre has this exclusive inside view of the men and women
protecting the military's digital networks at United States Cyber Command.
MIKE CERRE: It looks and sounds like every other stateside military base, far from the
front lines around the globe.
But Fort Meade, Maryland, home base to the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command,
the military's newest combatant command, is fighting a war every day.
Admiral Mike Rogers commands both the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command.
ADM.
MIKE ROGERS, National Security Agency Director: Today, we face threats that have increased
in sophistication, magnitude, intensity, volume and velocity.
MIKE CERRE: The Internet was largely created by the Defense Department in the late '60s,
primarily for its research and development operations.
Now, like every other wired institution, it depends on it for everything it does.
As a result, the Defense Department's information network is now targeted by nearly 40 million
malicious e-mails everyday.
Colonel Paul Craft's cyber-protection teams defend the network from this top secret operations
center called the JSOC.
COL.
PAUL CRAFT, Defense Information Systems Agency: We do not want the enemy to get a foothold
into the Department of Defense's networks, to gain or maintain any terrain, just like
they would in land.
MIKE CERRE: The "NewsHour" was granted exclusive access, under conditions we not identify team
members or the cyber-defense technologies used.
Vice Admiral Nancy Norton is the commander of the Joint Force Headquarters DoDIN, which
is responsible for protecting the military's network.
VICE ADM.
NANCY NORTON, Commander, Joint Force Headquarters DoDIN: The national defense strategy has made
pretty clear that we have near peer competitors in cyberspace from Russia and China.
North Korea and Iran are also routinely working to gain a competitive advantage by getting
into our networks.
MIKE CERRE: In addition to these adversaries, U.S. military cyber-warriors fight thousands
of non-state actors, terrorist groups, and professional hackers, all committed to cracking
the firewalls of cyber's first and presumably largest distributed network, now used for
everything from combat operations and to military health care.
COL.
PAUL CRAFT: Everything starts with a thing called an indicator of compromise.
It could be a malicious spear-phishing e-mail.
It could be an intrusion.
It could be a packet that looks malformed for some reason, that doesn't look right,
that could do something malicious to a network.
The simplest thing is to block it.
But if they're in your house, it's about getting that person out of your house and making sure
we knew what they touched.
And the network is again restored -- hardened and restored to normal.
MIKE CERRE: Once inside, hackers can disrupt a network's operations, like they did last
year to the British Health System, forcing hospitals to down.
Or they can steal confidential information, like Equifax's credit reports on more than
145 million Americans.
So far, the most serious cyber-security breaches of U.S. defense and intelligence networks
were inside jobs.
Army PFC Bradley Manning, who now identifies as Chelsea, copied and released nearly a million
classified documents.
The leaking of the NSA's surveillance techniques and other classified material by a subcontractor,
Edward Snowden.
There are also accidental security breaches, like the careless use of a flash drive by
a military unit in the Middle East in 2008 that temporarily created an opening into the
Defense Department's network.
These cyber-teams are drawn from all the services and ranks.
Some were trained by the military.
Others were recruited for their cyber-skills.
COL.
PAUL CRAFT: It's not like fighting a war in another domain, where you deploy troops, you
fight, you go home.
Conflict in the cyber-domain is constant.
MAN: I can shut down your power grids.
I can paralyze your infrastructure.
MIKE CERRE: A line of code buried in this Army recruiting ad generated nearly 800,000
hacking attempts on a fake military Web site.
The 1 percent cracked the site were invited to join the military's cyber-warfare team.
MIKE CERRE: Training and retaining this new generation of cyber-warriors is an ongoing
challenge.
WOMAN: I could walk out today and get a very easily six-figure salary.
It's not about the money.
It's about the pride in your job and what you do for the American people.
LT.
GEN.
VINCENT STEWART, Deputy Commander, U.S. Cyber Command: The challenge we have isn't recruiting.
The challenge is retention.
MIKE CERRE: Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart is a deputy commander with U.S. Cyber Command.
LT.
GEN.
VINCENT STEWART: The metaphor I like to use in this space, it's like playing hockey.
You're constantly on the move in both offense and defense.
And it's fast-paced, it's hectic, and one goal can change the outcome.
MIKE CERRE: General Stewart can't elaborate on Cyber Com's offensive tactics, like those
recently used to try to disrupt ISIS' online recruiting and media operation, or what, if
any involvement the U.S. had with the widely reported, but officially denied cyber-attack
on an Iranian nuclear facility, using a software virus called Stuxnet which disabled critical
equipment.
PETER SINGER, New America Foundation: What was created with Stuxnet wasn't just an operation
to sabotage Iranian nuclear research.
It was a new kind of weapon.
MIKE CERRE: Peter singer, with the new America Foundation, and other defense analysts believe
the Iranian attack to be a major turning point in cyber-warfare.
PETER SINGER: They created a weapon, something that caused physical damage, but it was unlike
every other in history, in that it was computer software.
It was a bunch of zeros and ones.
MIKE CERRE: But it is a more recent cyber-attack, on the 2016 presidential election, that is
now the concern.
Detecting, let alone stopping the Russian meddling, wasn't Cyber Command's job, since
it was largely executed on Facebook and other public social media networks, the military
is prohibited from intervening with.
LT.
GEN.
VINCENT STEWART: Do you want the intelligence community to work within the civilian sector?
MIKE CERRE: Do you think the civilian elements of this space have the capacity to defend
them at the level you can defend?
LT.
GEN.
VINCENT STEWART: Yes.
MIKE CERRE: You think they can?
LT.
GEN.
VINCENT STEWART: Yes.
MIKE CERRE: So, they don't need your help?
LT.
GEN.
VINCENT STEWART: This is an issue of priority.
This is an issue of some resources, but it's an issue of focus.
PETER SINGER: That's actually what has clouded the debate over 2016, is you have these intelligence
agencies seeing things coming in, seeing things hit American political institutions, but,
of course, they're not supposed to be involved in American political questions.
And then, on top of it, it throws them into a partisan debate.
And that's why it's been so difficult.
MIKE CERRE: The Senate Armed Services Committee recently challenged Cyber Command's Admiral
Mike Rogers on the U.S. response to the Russian interference.
SEN.
JACK REED (D), Rhode Island: Essentially, we have not taken on the Russians yet?
ADM.
MIKE ROGERS: It's probably fair to say that we have not opted to engage in some of the
same behaviors that we are seeing.
LT.
GEN.
VINCENT STEWART: This is not just about the Chinese.
This is about the Russians.
This is about the Iranians.
These are all our potential adversaries who understand the things that underpin Western
liberal democracies and are going after it.
That's what keeps me awake.
MIKE CERRE: In the cyber-realm, an attack can dismantle infrastructure and networks.
It can also destroy faith in institutions.
For the "PBS NewsHour," Mike Cerre, reporting from Fort Meade, Maryland.
JUDY WOODRUFF: It was the third week in a row where President Trump fired a member of
his administration.
This week, it David Shulkin of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
That and other news brings us to the analysis of Shields and Brooks.
That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Gentlemen, more turnover.
This time, it was the head of the Veterans Affairs Department.
David, it looked as if he and the president were getting along well, but then there was
a dispute over how fast they should privatize, what the Veterans Affairs, what the VA does,
and then there were questions about a trip he took to Europe with his wife last week.
But he's out.
DAVID BROOKS: Yes.
Can you imagine working at a place where every week somebody goes?
And this was a quiet week, but they still lost a Cabinet member.
And it just speaks to how little sense of camaraderie and trust there is, because you
never know who going to be there day to day and no assurance that so-and-so is staying
is a real assurance.
I guess, to me, the most interesting thing is the replacement with Rear Admiral Jackson.
And that's sort of part of the key belief of populism, which Donald Trump I guess stands
for, is that experience is more corrupting than it is educational, and that you need
clean people from outside who are pure from partisan interests and from rotting in the
swamp.
And we're about to test that proposition, because, apparently, an extremely good man,
but with no administrative ability, is being asked to run the second largest bureaucracy
in the U.S. government.
And as someone who has no administrative ability, but who hangs around people who do, it's just
a different style of thought.
And I have -- I feel great sympathy for that guy coming into what's going to be an extremely
difficult job.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And, in fact, we read that Dr. Ronny Jackson, the president's personal
-- the White House physician, was reluctant, apparently, when this was first raised with
him to take over the VA.
MARK SHIELDS: That's exactly it.
He does come with very high, as David mentioned, personal recommendations.
Lisa Monaco, who was the deputy chief of staff in the Obama White House, called him not only
a patriot, but a saint.
And Dan Pfeiffer went on the record, Obama people did, about -- and he had been there
for under three presidents.
So I think the personal credentials are pretty solid, and he -- and the president likes him.
And he did very well on television presenting the president's medical report and telling
with a straight face the president weighed 239 pounds.
(LAUGHTER)
MARK SHIELDS: So that endeared him.
But I come back to the firing.
And this is quite a unique administration in the terms of public service.
I can recall, when Donald Trump was running, he said -- and I looked it up again today
-- I know the best people, I know the best managers, I know the best steel makers, we're
going to have the best Cabinet.
I don't know how many more it's going to take.
We're on our third national security adviser at this point.
But what really is so bizarre to me is that I have been around so long that I can remember
when the Peace Corps was created.
And there was one young man who put his career on hold.
And they said, why are you doing this?
And he says, I have never done anything that was political or patriotic or unselfish, because
nobody never asked me.
And he said, President Kennedy asked me.
And, you know, that sense of public service, that it's a high calling, that it's for the
common good, is totally absent from this president, from his lexicon, from his frame of reference.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, and, you know, while we're talking about personnel, the head of
the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, David, appears to be in some hot water
this week, because it turns out he was living in a room or renting a room near Capitol Hill
last year and paying an unusually small rent, $50 a night, in an area where it's more expensive
than that.
And then there's a story in The Washington Post today about unusually inexperienced and
not -- people who didn't do a great job in the White House Personnel Office.
So, just more questions.
DAVID BROOKS: Yes.
And this goes to the point Mark made and to the notion of norms.
I have been talking to a lot of people who like the president -- the president's approval
ratings are up again.
He's up to about 42 percent.
And people are saying, I forget -- I ignore all that tweeting.
I just know the economy is doing well, and so I give him credit for that.
And there's a validity to that argument.
But there's been a damage to the norms by which we govern ourselves, by the capacity
of state, why we think about our government.
He appoints people who he's personally linked to, as if we're in a royal system where a
personal relationship to the king is all that matters.
And then with Pruitt, he takes this apartment which has some ties to the wife of a lobbyist.
And it's not that it's the biggest corruption scandal in the history of the republic.
It's just that somebody who goes in with a mentality, I'm here to serve the people, I'm
here to serve the country, it just doesn't feel right to do that.
Alarm bells go off in your head of any normal person, oh, that's going to look bad, that's
going to hurt my capacity to do my work.
And so the fact that the alarm bells suddenly didn't go off suggests to me that the shift
in capacity from private sector to public sector has not happened.
They haven't crossed the mental leap that Mark described, that you can be a corporate
lawyer, you can do all that, and it's perfectly fine, but when you do the public service,
you're entering a different realm.
You're probably not going to get fly first class, which you're already used to.
There is just going to be sacrifices you're going to have to make, but you do it because
you feel it's the right thing.
JUDY WOODRUFF: It's a different realm, Mark.
And, typically, the vetting is tough to get these jobs in the administration.
MARK SHIELDS: It is.
And the piece you mentioned in The Post pointed out that they started with a far smaller pool
of talent.
Most administrations start with 300,000 names.
They had, I think, one-fourth of that when they came in.
And many have been shot down because they didn't meet the loyalty test at one point
or another.
And, of course, the whole personnel staffing was absolutely blown up.
It was done by Chris Christie.
They had done, according to independent observers, a pretty darn good job, and then they just
burned that.
So they have been behind.
And most administrations, Republican and Democrat, at the Office of Personnel Management, put
in professionals, I mean, really talented people.
I have known a number of them myself.
And, you know, that's -- because they recognize that personnel is policy in any administration.
You could have the greatest ideas and policy in the making, but unless you have able, committed
people to execute those policies, it's for naught.
And that's exactly what's been the problem here.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, change of subject, but related in a, way because it's administration
policy, David.
As we learned from the Census Bureau, from the administration, the Trump administration,
that what the census folks are going to do in 2020 is add a question about people's citizenship,
raising all kinds of questions about whether this is going to be a deterrent to people
participating who are living here without all the proper documents.
DAVID BROOKS: Yes.
In normal times, frankly, it doesn't strike me as an odd question to ask, are you a citizen?
And, historically, the census has asked that question.
But in the atmosphere of fear that surrounds immigration these days, with ICE behaving
as they are, and with the administration really threatening in some occasions to kick citizens
out or kick noncitizens out, what you're doing, you're -- this comes at the end of that -- in
this climate.
And given that climate, asking this question, making this policy shift now can only be interpreted
as a way to get people not to answer the question.
There is an important shift of political power, because money goes to the -- depends on how
many people you are representing in each jurisdiction.
Federal money follows those numbers.
And if you're scaring people away from participating in the census, then that jurisdiction will
get less money.
And so given the climate, it strikes me as a menacing question and probably a counterproductive
one.
It's already clear that if you have a government person coming to somebody's door and asking
that same question and a private person, people answer the private person more, because there's
no fear there.
But the government implies force.
And so they already get a higher turndown rate.
If you then make it even more menacing, because they're going to ask this question that could
get you thrown out, people are going to close the door.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And, of course, the government, Mark, the government is trying -- Mark, the
administration is saying they think they're going to get a more accurate count.
But I guess the skeptics are saying, no, they are going to hide.
MARK SHIELDS: Well, you can put me down on the side of the skeptics, because there's
132 government programs based on need.
And so you have to get -- whether it's food stamps or whatever it might be, school lunches,
that are based -- the apportionment to the states is based upon the need.
And if the poorer people, the less affluent people who oftentimes are those who are recent
immigrants to this country, are silenced out of timidity, fear, and we don't get an accurate
count, that means people who need it most are not going to get it, are going to be deprived.
It is going to mean less political power to states like California, but, ironically, probably
to a state like Texas, too, if it's enforced, because they're -- the large Latino population.
But just the motives are -- the hands are not clean coming to this question.
It didn't -- something that came up out of a think tank.
It was announced by Wilbur Ross, the secretary of commerce, who you don't think had spent
a Ph.D.'s research on looking at this.
It did have a certain appeal to the president and the White House.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Different subject, the event that really took over Washington last Saturday,
and that was the big March For Our Lives, David, led by those young people at Parkland
High School, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Is this -- are we seeing -- it was a huge turnout around the country.
Is this something that's going to last?
What is your sense of it?
Is it going to make a difference in the argument over gun control?
DAVID BROOKS: I'm still skeptical it will make a difference, frankly.
I think they have not done a good job of winning over anybody who has blocked legislation in
the past.
But it was instructive to me.
I went to watch.
And I went to be with the marchers as a journalistic observer, of course.
And it shocked me as a very moderate march.
It was focused on the issues, specific issues of banning assault weapons, a few specific
moderate pieces of legislation.
And I was greatly heartened by it, frankly, because sometimes it seems like the extreme
on this side feeds the extreme on this side, and our entire political system is gyrating,
without any sense of moderation.
But this was a moderate march.
And the people were good-hearted.
There was a good spirit.
There was no culture war fighting.
There was no radicalization.
It struck me as democracy the way it's supposed to work.
And then I followed the feedback on the march on Twitter, frankly, and it's like I was at
a different march.
It's as if it was, they were all radicals, and one set of radicals was shouting at another.
So it was revelatory to me that the world you see on Twitter is not the real world,
and that there are a lot of decent people who have positions, this or that, you can
agree with or not, but there's a -- it gave me a much more hopeful sense about our democracy,
frankly.
JUDY WOODRUFF: It says something about social media.
Mark, 30 seconds.
MARK SHIELDS: It does say -- I think it does say an awful lot about social media.
Judy, no arrests here in Washington.
Very little refuse left behind.
They were a clean, respectful group of people.
And I think David's absolutely right, that the good will, good nature was pervasive,
that there weren't taunts or any really hostile activity.
And, you know, I am more hopeful, quite frankly, having lived through it and seen it, and that
there may be some hope, that they have sustained it, they have kept it going.
I do think that the NRA national headquarters is very much on the defensive right now.
And gun sales are down, you may have noticed, which is -- Remington went into Chapter 11
this week, after 202 years.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Ah, well, we will watch it.
Congress was away.
They're coming back.
Maybe we will get a sense next week.
MARK SHIELDS: We will.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark Shields, David Brooks, happy Passover, happy Easter to both of you.
MARK SHIELDS: Thank you.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Now: A work of fiction explores migration, violence, love and fear.
Jeffrey Brown sits down with the author of our March pick for Now Read This, our monthly
book club.
It's a partnership with The New York Times.
JEFFREY BROWN: Two young people fall in love in an unnamed city in the Muslim world and,
as violence takes hold, they're forced to flee, joining a mass migration that's become
one of the hallmarks and most contention events of our time.
But this is a novel, "Exit West," that uses realism and some magic to capture life for
millions today and a possible future.
As we do every month, we have asked you to send in questions.
And author Mohsin Hamid is here to answer as many as we can fit in.
Mohsin, nice to see you again.
MOHSIN HAMID, Author, "Exit West": Thank you.
JEFFREY BROWN: Thanks for coming.
I will get right to it.
There were a lot of people who wondered -- this is a little unusual to get right to this,
but a lot of people about how this matched up with you, right?
So, Elaine from Fayetteville, Arkansas: "Is any part of this novel drawn from your own
experience?"
Another question: "Are your main characters based on real people you know?"
MOHSIN HAMID: Well, I have been migrating my who life, so, in a way, I suppose I was
always going to write at some point a novel about migration.
I moved to California when I was 3, and then back to America when I was 18 from Pakistan,
London, now back to Pakistan.
So the experience of migration and the emotional pain and confusion that comes from it, I think,
do in a way come from me.
But, at the same time, the horrors Saeed and Nadia experience are things that I'm not familiar
with, but are a bit like nightmares for me.
Living in Pakistan, it's someone that one is terrified could happen, as opposed to what
has been happening.
JEFFREY BROWN: You chose -- a lot of people noticed that the -- not giving -- well, there
are the names of the two characters, but not other characters, right?
Some places are named, but not the city where they're from.
So, Christina Pike (ph) from Cherry Valley, California: "Was Mr. Hamid trying to give
this story a timeless, universal quality by not giving a specific location to the city?"
MOHSIN HAMID: A bit.
It's a good question.
I think that, for me, the nameless city partly was because I didn't want to name it Lahore,
where I live, because something terrible happens to that city.
And it would have broken my heart to do it to my own city.
But, partly, I wanted the reader to be able imagine it as their city or the city of their
father or mother or their best friend.
JEFFREY BROWN: And Jill from Connecticut, Bob Olson (ph) in Minnesota: "What is the
thought behind giving the only two protagonists names in the book?"
MOHSIN HAMID: The novel covers a lot of ground.
It moves from place to place.
Different characters come into it.
And having only two named characters just, I think, keeps the reader in touch with the
emotional heart of the story, that whoever else you meet, they matter, but it's really
these two, this couple, that the book is all about.
JEFFREY BROWN: They move, others move -- and this was the magic I was referring to -- for
those who have not read the book, people move through open doors.
Explain that, because, obviously, that interested our readers.
MOHSIN HAMID: So, in the novel, these black doors begin to appear, black rectangles where
doors used to be.
So maybe you're in your apartment, and the door to your bathroom has been replaced this
black rectangle.
And if you push through it, you're not longer in D.C. or wherever you live.
You're somewhere halfway around the world, like Tokyo or Bangkok.
And suddenly in the novel billions of people begin to move, and the whole world starts
to change.
JEFFREY BROWN: And so a lot of people asked about that device.
And I was interested.
Conversely, some people, Connor (ph) from Saint Louis said: "How and why did you decide
not to write anything about the couple's physical journey out of the company?"
MOHSIN HAMID: Well, I because what has happened is, we have become so focused on the story
of how somebody crosses the border, how did you cross the Mediterranean in a small boat,
or how did you cross the U.S.-Mexico border, crawl underneath the barbed wire?
And we think that people who have done that are different from us.
It makes us imagine that that's all their life consisted of, and that's very different
from us.
But once you take away that part of their story, you're left with people who are just
like us, actually, that any of us can have this experience.
And so hopefully taking away that part of the story doesn't minimize the importance
in the real world that that happens, but reminds us that that is not what makes these people
who they are.
They are people just like us.
JEFFREY BROWN: But if you put it into a kind of magic setting, that opens up a whole other
issue, doesn't it?
Because then we wonder what -- who are they, what's going on, how does this even happen?
MOHSIN HAMID: Well, I think that what is happening is, technology works a bit like magic.
So, right now, most of us have a little black rectangle in our pocket or our backpack or
our purse.
And when we look at it, our consciousness goes far, far away from our bodies, like magically
appearing somewhere else, looking at your phone, and suddenly you're reading about the
moon or Mars or Antarctica.
And I thought, what would happen if your body could move as easily as your mind can move?
I think technology is obliterating geographic distance.
And so the doors in a way give life to that.
JEFFREY BROWN: There was a question I was quite interested in, because it kind of goes
to your thinking about how you write.
It's: "I have seen 'Exit West' described as a fairy tale.
I'm not sure that's entirely accurate, but the language in the book does have, to me,"
this reader, "striking style that reminds me of someone telling a story.
I felt like a listener in some ways, rather than a reader."
MOHSIN HAMID: I'm really happy to hear that.
I write by reading myself, myself out loud again and again.
I think that we...
JEFFREY BROWN: You walk around the room talking to yourself, reading?
MOHSIN HAMID: Yes.
If you were to see me from a distance, you would think that I was crazy, just this guy
pacing around in his study talking to himself.
But, yes, I'm reading constantly.
I read two hours out loud for every one hour I write.
But I think the reason why that matters is because we imagine we read with our eyes,
but we actually process words and language through circuitry in our minds connected to
our ears.
JEFFREY BROWN: And there was a lot of people wondering -- I'm not going to give away the
ending for everybody, but a lot of people wondering about where this leaves you.
Are you optimistic about the situation, the refugee situation?
MOHSIN HAMID: I'm optimistic about our species.
You know, we are descended from refugees, all of us.
Our people have migrated.
Everybody comes from the mother continent of Africa.
And now people have moved on since then.
So I think that we will find a way.
Human beings do.
And the current fear that we have of the future, I suspect we will overcome it.
JEFFREY BROWN: All right.
We're going to continue our talk.
And we will have that entire conversation available online.
For now, first, let me say thank you, Mohsin Hamid, for joining us.
MOHSIN HAMID: Thank you.
JEFFREY BROWN: And let me tell you at home all about our pick for April, as we turn back
to nonfiction.
The next book is "The Death and Life of The Great Lakes."
It's an epic and wonderfully told story of history, science and reportage about the largest
source of freshwater in the world and the threat to America's waterways.
Prize-winning author Dan Egan will join us for online extras all month and then answer
your questions right here at the end of April.
So, remember, you can join Now Read This on Facebook and through the "NewsHour" site.
We're at 51,000 readers and counting in the book club.
And, most importantly, everybody's reading along.
Join us.
Thanks.
And now to our "NewsHour" Shares, something that caught our eye.
The video of a rescued chimpanzee's flight to wildlife sanctuary recently spread like
wildfire on the Internet.
The "NewsHour"'s Julia Griffin tracked down the video's pilot and asked about his mission
to save Africa's imperiled primates.
JULIA GRIFFIN: It's a simple video that tugs at the heartstrings: A baby chimp bonds with,
sleeps on, and even learns from the man flying him to a safer home.
The pilot is Anthony Caere, Belgian aviator working for Virunga National Park in the Democratic
Republic of Congo.
ANTHONY CAERE, Virunga National Park: Since I was a little boy, I had two big wishes.
And it was flying small planes and animals.
And when I had the opportunity to work for Virunga National Park, I grabbed it with two
hands.
JULIA GRIFFIN: On a normal day, Caere is an eye in the sky, assisting rangers in anti-poaching
patrols, wildlife censuses and other duties.
But a few times a year, he ferries orphaned apes and monkeys 400 miles north to Lwiro
Primate Rehabilitation Center.
His passenger this time was Mussa, a 3-year-old chimpanzee recently rescued from poachers.
ANTHONY CAERE: It's actually a very sad story, because they took that little chimp away from
his family.
They killed his family.
JULIA GRIFFIN: Poachers often sell slaughtered adult monkeys as bushmeat in local markets,
but they prefer to peddle the baby animals as pets.
Once confiscated from their captors, Lwiro provides primates like Mussa a safe space
to recover.
The organization cares for more than six dozen chimps and nearly 100 monkeys, many of which
arrive malnourished, stressed and physically wounded from tight ropes and small cages,
which is why, Caere says, most baby chimps are not restrained during his flights.
ANTHONY CAERE: If you have like a really chill little baby chimp who is happy to be on your
lap, and it holds you, then you have the wrong effect when you put it in a cage.
Then it will totally freak out, start to cry.
And it can die, actually.
So we take the time to gain his trust, to feed him.
And when he feels comfortable and he jumps on your arms and he holds you, then it's time
to do the flight.
JULIA GRIFFIN: And while he is happy his video went viral, Caere emphasizes this flight should
never have happened in the first place.
ANTHONY CAERE: I hope the people not only say, OK, it's a cute movie, but the message
is that that little chimp should be with his mom, and not on my lap.
JULIA GRIFFIN: Mussa is now in quarantine with other rescued baby chimps.
When he is ready, he will be introduced to a new chimp family.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Julia Griffin.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And it restores your faith in people.
And a news update before we go.
One Baton Rouge, Louisiana, police officer has been fired over a 2016 fatal shooting
of a black man.
Alton Sterling was killed in a struggle outside of a convenience store.
The second officer involved was suspended for three days.
Earlier this week, the state declined to bring criminal charges against the white officers.
And that's tomorrow night on "PBS NewsHour Weekend."
No, you won't see it on "PBS NewsHour Weekend."
But that is the "NewsHour" for tonight.
I'm Judy Woodruff.
Have a great Easter and Passover weekend.
Thank you, and good night.
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