Not. I live as a man. So theres a disconnect, some people might say, between my biological sex and my gender identity. Woodruff and, an armenian mosaic 100 years after the massacre of a population photographic threads connecting generations of diaspora. Those are some of the stories were covering on tonights pbs newshour. Major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by at lincoln financial, we believe youre in charge. Youre the chief life officer and this is your annual shareholders meeting. Youre overseeing presentations on research and development and welcoming new members of the team. Youre in charge of it all. Lincoln financial is committed to helping you take charge of your future. Life, income, retirement, Group Benefits and advice. Lincoln financial. Youre in charge. Supported by the john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation. Committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More information at macfound. Org and by the alfred p. Sloan foundation. Supporting science, technology and improved Economic Performance and Financial Literacy in the 21st century. And with the ongoing support of these institutions and. This program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. And by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Ifill a sudden revelation today, three months after a u. S. Attack killed two alqaeda captives. The victims were humanitarian aid workers american Warren Weinstein of maryland and giovanni lo porto of italy. Ifill president ial confirmation came this morning in the White House Briefing room. It is a cruel and bitter truth that in the fog of war generally and our fight against terrorists specifically, mistakes, sometimes deadly mistakes, can occur. Ifill u. S. Officials say the two hostages died in mid january, when a drone fired missiles at a terrorist site inside pakistan. We do believe that the we believed that this was an al qaida compound, that no civilians were present and that capturing these terrorists was not possible. We do believe that the operation did take out dangerous members of al qaida. What we did not know, tragically, is that al qaida was hiding the presence of warren and giovanni in this same compound. Ifill Warren Weinstein had made several video appeals for his release after disappearing in lahore, pakistan in 2011. He worked with the u. S. Agency for international development. Italian giovanni lo porto was kidnapped the next year, helping to build homes for pakistani flood victims. Italian Prime Minister matteo renzi voiced profound pain today over lo port and the weinstein family issued a statement, saying in part back at the white house, president obama offered deepest apologies to the families. As president and as commanderinchief, i take full responsibility for all our counterterrorism operations, including the one that inadvertently took the lives of warren and giovanni. I profoundly regret what happened. Ifill it was left to White House Press secretary josh earnest to explain why it took three months to announce the deaths. Only in the last several days did the Intelligence Community reach an assessment with a high degree of confidence that dr. Weinstein had been killed in a u. S. Government Counter Terrorism operation. Ifill earnest said the government will make payments to both families. An independent review of the attack is also under way. House Speaker John Boehner suggested congress, too, will have questions. We need all the facts for the families and so that we can make sure that nothing like this ever happens again in our efforts to keep americans safe. Ifill it also emerged that ahmed farouq, a u. S. , pakistani citizen and alqaeda leader, died in the same raid that killed the hostages. Another american, adam gadahn died in a separate drone strike. He had served as a spokesman for the terror network. Gadahn was on the f. B. I. s most wanted terrorists list. He was the First American to be charged with treason since world war two. Ifill well return to the announcement of the hostage deaths, and its implications after the news summary. Woodruff the u. S. Senate confirmed Loretta Lynch as attorney general today, 56 to 43, after more than a fivemonth wait. Her nomination had stalled over an abortion dispute in a sex trafficking bill. Republicans also criticized her support for president obamas immigration orders limiting deportations. Democrats, including Chuck Schumer of new york, said she deserved better. Shes just great. But, one sad note. Theres one cloud on this sunny day and that is the long time it took to confirm her. Weve heard about a whole lot of issues completely unrelated to her experience or her qualifications. No one has assailed Loretta Lynch. Woodruff lynch is currently the u. S. Attorney for the Eastern District of new york. As attorney general, shell succeed eric holder, whos clashed frequently with republicans. Chuck grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary committee, argued she wont be the clean break thats needed. No one disputes that she has an impressive legal background. It was her testimony before the committee that caused concerns for many senators, including me. After thoroughly reviewing that testimony, i concluded that she wont lead the department in a different direction. Woodruff in the end, ten republicans voted to confirm, including senator mitch mcconnell, the majority leader. Lynch will be the first black woman to serve as attorney general. Ifill there will be no jail time for former c. I. A. Director david petraeus. A federal judge sentenced him to two years probation today for giving classified material to his mistress, who was also his biographer. Hell also pay a 100,000 fine. The retired general made a brief statement after his Court Session in charlotte, north carolina. Today marks the end of a twoandahalfyear ordeal that resulted from mistakes i made. As i did in the past, i apologized to those closest to me and many others including those with whom i was privileged to serve in government and in the military over the years. Ifill petraeus resigned his c. I. A. Post in 2012, after admitting to the affair. Before that, hed led u. S. Forces in iraq and afghanistan. Woodruff a major merger in the Telecom World has crumbled. It was widely reported today that comcast will drop its offer to buy Time Warner Cable for 45 billion. The proposal had run into opposition from federal regulators. A formal announcement could come tomorrow. Ifill theres word that north korea may already have 20 nuclear warheads, and the ability to double its arsenal by next year. An account in the wall street journal says Chinese Nuclear experts relayed that estimate in a closeddoor meeting earlier this year. North korea has carried out three Nuclear Tests in recent years. Woodruff leaders of the European Union agreed late today to triple the funding for rescuing migrants trying to cross the mediterranean from africa. The announcement came at an emergency session in brussels. Cathy newman of independent Television News is there. Reporter its a tragedy which for just a minute this afternoon silenced europes usually vocal political leaders. Prime ministers and president s bowing their heads in memory of the 1700 migrants drowned in the mediterranean after these same e. U. Leaders scrapped the searchandrescue operation. Do you think the e. U. Has failed in its moral duty . I think the e. U. Has failed in the sense that 800 people have died. The e. U. Has failed in that the flow of vessels and refugees keeps on flowing in. And thats what were trying to do now is solve the problem. Reporter these more fortunate migrants say military intervention by the west in libya and beyond unleashed chaos which is causing their compatriots to flee in their thousands. So theres a moral obligation to help. Theyre the cause all that is happening in africa. Reporter you mean the west destabilizing libya. The west and the u. S. , they are the cause of what is going on in africa. Reporter its too late for these victims, but the e. U. Plan proposed what the italian Prime Minister has called targeted military intervention, capturing and destroying the people traffickers vessels. As part of the fight back, the royal navys hm s bullwar, already in the mediterranean will pluck hundreds of migrants to safety. Once aboard, they have a legal right to claim asylum in britain, something officials are determined to circumvent. No wonder a senior british diplomat told me this was one of the great insoluble problems of our age how to save lives without sacrificing a tough approach to immigration demanded by many european woodruff italy now estimates that up to 200,000 migrants will try to cross from north africa this year. Ifill u. S. Led air strikes in syria have killed nearly 2,100 people since september. Thats according to the syrian observatory for human rights, based in britain. The group says more than 1,900 of those killed were Islamic State fighters, the main targets of the strikes. Another 90 were said to be members of the al nusra front, linked to alqaeda. 66 of the dead were identified as civilians, including ten children. Woodruff back in this country, the u. S. Geological survey warned today that man made earthquakes are on the rise and that oil and gas drilling is to blame. Its the First Comprehensive look at the problem. The report cites growing seismic activity in eight southern and midwestern states where hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is being used intensively. Ifill and on wall street, the Dow Jones Industrial average gained 20 points to close near 18,060. The nasdaq also rose 20, finally topping its record close set 15 years ago, in the dotcom bubble. And the sandp 500 added five. Woodruff still to come on the newshour what deadly strikes say about u. S. Drone missions; potential conflicts of interest in donations to the Clinton Foundation; a personal story of transformation to find ones true self; documenting the armenia diaspora around the world; and, barney frank on his fight against inequality. Ifill todays announcement of the accidental killing of two hostages in pakistan raises questions about the tactics and casualties of war, to explore those we turn to congressman john delaney of maryland, who was closely involved in the search for Warren Weinstein. Michael leiter, the former director of the national Counter Terrorism center during the first Obama Administration. Hes now with a National Security technology company. And wall street journal National Security reporter adam entous. Congressman delaney, you were very involved with the family in the effort to find Warren Weinstein. What canny tell us about that . Obviously, today is a very sad day for the whole family, and ive had the privilege of getting to know elaine and the daughter, warrens daughters over the last several years as we worked together to try to get warren home. And theyre a great family. Theyve been very strong through this whole process which as you can imagine, has been really hard. But theyve also been determined and theyve been smart about things to do to both shine attention on warrens case and to make sure our government is doing everything they can, which is where i was helping them. And our job really was to make sure all of the resources of our government, which as we all know are significant, technological and intelligence resources are being brought to bear on getting warren home. Unfortunately, that didnt happen. Its my opinion that we need to do more. We should have done more on warrens case. We should do more for all of these hostages because this is a complicated business. We have a lot of capabilities. Men and women who work on bringing our hostages home are terrific people. They work really hard, but its not clear that things are that its a signature of an al qaeda operation. And unfortunately in this case and in previous cases we target those spots even though theres a nearcertainty that there are not noncombatants or u. S. Persons there. But near certainty is not absolute certainty, and intelligence can be imperfect. It was in this case. And when youre going after al qaeda aggressively these things unfortunately, can happen. Ifill it wasnt long ago that we heard about Kayla Mueller also killed unintentionally. I wonder whether if youre taken hostage now in this region by al qaeda if there is any chance ever of getting out . It doesnt seem like it ends well anymore. Well, it has ended well in some cases, but the fact is for terrorists, kidnapping is a wonderful force. It forces the u. S. Potentially to engage. It gives them an epropaganda value so there are lots of place whrrkz syria, iraq yemen or pakistan, where americans are vulnerable. And putting seals and special Operations Forces on the ground to try to rescue them, one endangers the hostages and two puts our people on the ground in danger so this is a very tricky operation wherever it happens. Ifill adam entous this apparently happened in january, were not precisely sure when or where. Why are we just hearing about it now . It took a while per the administration to get else intels which indicated that in this strike, which they assumed was like any other strike, they thought they hit their target. They thought it was an al qaeda leader. It took a while to pick up intelligence and over heard conversations in which al qaeda memberes were discussing the death of the hostages. At that point they needed to basically go through all the intelligence that they had gathered, other drone feeds that they had to try to piece together what exactly happened. This is, obviously, a very difficult thing to do. Its not like we put a team on the ground to go take samples and collect a body to identify who they were. You can understand why this would take a period of time. Ifill how unusual it was to declassify this kind of information . I mean, certainly, very limited information has been released about this program. It is largely conducted behind a cloak of secrecy. In this case, you know obviously, al qaeda knows that the two hostages were killed. It was only a matter of time before it did become public. So i think the administrations calculation here was if you keep it secret, its only going to make it worse. That said, they didnt disclose everything. They didnt tell us the date of the strike. They didnt tell us precisely where it took place. In fact, in their Public Comments theyre not even cailg it a c. I. A. Drone trike. Theyre calling it a counterterrorism strike that took place on the border between pakistan and afghanistan. Ifill you confirmed it was drone strike. This is a language used in discussing classified information that the administration uses to describe covert programs conducted there. Ifill Michael Leiter, what was the scope of the intelligence failure here . Well, i think it was potentially significant. And the administration has started an independent review to figure out what went wrong. But i have to say, these operations take a long time to actually manifest themselves. It takes lots and lots of surveillance. Usually video surveillance, signals intelligence, maybe human intelligence. And what they obviously saw was a place where al qaeda operatives were assembling, and what they likely didnt know is there were two other people in there and thats because they were, in fact, hostages so they were never coming and going. So you can sort of imagine what the potential failure was. The second failure, of course, is not knowing in other strike that there was adam gadahan a u. S. Person there. Clearly, less tragic. He was a member of al qaeda in my view. But there is supposed to be an additional review for u. S. Persons. Thats important for due process. And that didnt occur before the strike. So we have two separate potential failures one, obviously, with the innocents, vastly more tragic than the other. Ifill and both of these failures, congressman delaney occurred in pakistan. And we saw Elaine Weinstein in her family today raise questions about pakistans role in this. Do you think these are legitimate questions . I think they are legitimate questions. I mean its important not to have all of our focus be on the intelligence around these strikes because i believe the people in our government who are executing against these strikes, you know are working to a really high standard, and they rely upon the intelligence, doing lots of surveillance. And it is hard, as president said to be absolute certain nearcertainty is the standard. I think the bigger question as it relates to war knows situation and all the hostages situations is why arent we finding these people across in many cases years and years and years theyre held in captivity. Its one thing to focus on the 3060 days before the strike, but to me thats not the most important question. The most important question is why cant we find hostages after years of looking for them when you consider the capabilities we have. That is what elaine i think is getting at was pakistan, where he was captured, as helpful as he could have been. Thats the same question i have. We were working to the this and we saw specific things that we would have liked debate better better coordination, better access to information because in my opinion, not only should we be doing a better job coordinating our resources and assets here. Ive called for effectively a hostage czar to be put together or appointed in the administration that will have the ability to cut through the bureaucracy that inevitably exists in eye lot of areas of our government that touch