of the factory collapse in bangladesh that has now killed more than 400 people. >> ifill: spencer michels has the story of a california oyster farm and the high-stakes battle over whether to keep it open. >> the repercussions extend far beyond this spectacular pacific coast enclave to the restaurants of the bay area and all the way to washington d.c., where politicians of both parties are joining in the fight. >> woodruff: and two years after the manhunt for osama bin laden came to an end. margaret warner talks to two women from the c.i.a.'s sisterhood who helped track down the world's most wanted terrorist. >> ifill: that's all ahead on tonight's "newshour." >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> more than two years ago, the people of b.p. made a commitment to the gulf. and everyday since, we've worked hard to keep it. today, the beaches and gulf are open for everyone to enjoy. we shared what we've learned so that we can all produce energy more safely. b.p. is also committed to america. we support nearly 250,000 jobs and invest more here than anywhere else. we're working to fuel america for generations to come. our commitment has never been stronger. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. 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: the boston bombings investigation took another new turn today with federal charges filed against three college buddies of dzhokhar tsarnaev. they're accused of trying to get rid of evidence or lying to investigators after the attack. two of the three are from kazakhstan. azamat tazhayakov is on the left and dias kadyrbayev is in the center in this undated photo with tsarnaev, taken in new york. the third new suspect was identified as robel phillipos. we get more now from dina temple raston of npr. dina temple rafton give us a sense of what we know about these three. >> we know two are from kazakhstan and one american. two the kazahkstan students were arrested 11 days ago. they were arrested on immigration charges. and officiallies had some idea that they might be involved somehow with the main suspect in the boston bombing dzhokar tsarnaev, and so they basically kept them on the immigration charges until they could build a case that would at least give them some idea of what role they might have played. it's important toll realize that the role they played was after the bombing not before it. it appears what they did was tried to help their college friend. >> ifill: let's walk through the events in boston. it said they intentionally obstructed justice. how did they do that allegedly? >> there are two things we think happened according to the criminal complaint. the first is that when they first saw the photographs that were released of the suspects, suspect number two is who authorities believe is dzhokar tsarnaev, the one with the white hat. when they first saw that picture they actually texted him and said, "hey dude that looks like you." and he wrote back "lol." when they realized it was him they went to his dorm room and found a backpack with fireworks emptied of their powder and vasoline in the backpack and eye university assignment. they grabbed the backpack and decided they would dispose of it. it soamed like something they did on the spur of the moment. it wasn't something they really thought through. >> ifill: when authorities began to talk to the young men, they began to uncover a pattern of not only obstruction of justice but also lying and concealment of their role after the fact? >> well, not exactly. robel phillipos, the third person who was arrested today, this 19-year-old student also from this university, he is the only one who is being charged with lying to federal agents. he is not being charged with obstruction of justice. apparently when federal agents asked if he had had any contact with dzhokar tsarnaev after the bombing he denied it. they asked him if they'd gone to the dorm room or the friends had gone and he denied that, too. he was basically caught in a lie to federal agents. >> ifill: so the stories changed as the -- in the days -- it's important to remember that the tsarnaev brothers were at large for four days and during that period of time authorities were talking to the young men and we assume others? >> yes, exactly. these young men, the other thing that was interesting that they mentioned in the criminal complaint that one of the young men went to the dormitory to meet dzhokar tsarnaev day afghanistan the bombing, two days after the bombing he had given himself a short haircut and he mentioned that to f.b.i. agents. >> ifill: how did they get into his room. this is his dorm room at the university of massachusetts at dartmouth and his roommate let them him? dzhokhar wasn't there himself? >> that's what we understand. when they took the backpack out. he was not there the second time they went. the roommate let them in. according to the criminal complaint they took the back therepack and laptop -- they took the backpack and they took the laptop as well because they didn't want to rouse any suspicion from the roommate by just taking the backpack. they found the backpack with the fireworks without the powder but they didn't find the laptop. in fact that was why they had gone to the landfill to find it presumably it's not mentioned exactly in the complaint but presumably the students hung on to the laptop and that's something authorities have now. that's important because it gives them an ability to take a look at what dzhokhar tsarnaev was doing before the bombing because they can mirror that harddrive. >> ifill: do we have any idea of history of these young cnn how long they've known each other and hoe close -- how close friends they are? >> it seems they were very close friends. he spent a lot of time in the apartment of kazahk students. it seems they came together over the last couple of years as foreign students often do when they are together in the college environment. i don't think anybody necessarily thinks there's anything particularly nefarious about their friendship. one of kazahk students had gone to kazahkstan in december and had come back and there's some question about whether or not there was something suspicious about that? a lot of foreign students go back home for the christmas holiday. there hasn't been any real suggestion that it's a problem. what is interesting about the visa violations is apparently part of what was going on is that the kids didn't attend class much. but, you know, there are a lot of college students who do that. >> ifill: that can be used as a pretext to hold you. to be clear they are not charged with complicity with the bombing it is. what therl charged with, how stiff is the potential penalty? >> they are get years in prison for this. but i think what is important here is that we've understood from officials that they are following as many -- tracking as many as a dozen people who might have something to do with this case. what these arrests today shed light on is not what happened before the bombing which is what they are really interested in. how did they make the bombs? did they test the bombs? did someone help them put together the plot? what this sheds light on is what happened afterwards they have more evidence on that than before hand. >> >> ifill: it's fair to say the hunt is underway. >> there's more to come. >> ifill: dina themel raston thanks so much. >> your very welcome. >> woodruff: still to come on the "newshour": the debate over austerity at home and abroad; the global network behind cheap clothing; the fight over oyster farming and the "sisterhood" behind the "manhunt" for osama bin laden. but first, the other news of the day. here's hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: a wave of bombings across iraq killed at least 15 people today. dozens more were wounded. the deadliest incident took place east of fallujah. a suicide bomber targeted anti-al-qaeda sunni fighters as they were being paid. six people died there. the attacks continued a surge of sectarian violence that erupted in late april. in economic news, the federal reserve warned there's evidence that budget cuts and the resumption of higher social security taxes are restraining growth. it said it will continue its stimulus measures for now. the fed statement helped drag wall street lower. the dow jones industrial average lost nearly 139 points to close below 14,701. the nasdaq fell 29 points to close at 3,299. april was a good month for car and truck sales-- the best in six years, in fact. ford's u.s. sales rose 18%, while both chrysler and general motors saw an 11% increase. a rebound in pickup truck sales led the way for the detroit auto-makers, partly due to rising demand from home builders and other businesses. president obama today nominated a new overseer for two mortgage lending giants and a new chief regulator of the telecommunications industry. north carolina democratic congressman melvin watt was the choice to lead the federal housing finance agency, which governs mortgage giants fannie mae and freddie mac. tom wheeler, a former cable and wireless industry lobbyist, was selected to head the federal communications commission. the president announced the nominations at a white house ceremony with both men by his side. >> mel has led efforts to rein in unscrupulous mortgage lenders. he has helped protect consumers from the reckless risk taking that led to the financial crisis in the first place and he has fought to give more americans in low-income neighborhoods access to affordable housing. for more than 30 years, tom has been at the forefront of changes we've seen in the way we communicate and how we live our lives. he was one of the leaders of a company that created good high paying jobs. >> sreenivasan: the two nominations are subject to senate confirmation. 32 mentally disabled men in iowa won a jury award of $240 million today from a defunct texas firm. starting in the 1970s, the men worked at a turkey processing plant. investigators testified they were held in virtual enslavement-- housed in a tumble-down, rat-infested bunkhouse and paid just $65 a month. the conditions were discovered in a 2009 inspection. a veteran congressman and a former navy seal will face each other in the race for a u.s. senate seat in massachusetts. representative ed markey won the democratic nomination in yesterday's primary, and gabriel gomez won a three-way republican primary. they are vying for the senate seat vacated by john kerry, when he became secretary of state. the election will be held eight weeks from now, on june 25. those are some of the day's major stories. now, back to judy. >> woodruff: and we turn to a growing pushback against economic austerity measures here and in europe. the day started with several big protests abroad as citizens complained their governments are cutting spending too severely. european capitals filled with may day crowds protesting austerity measures that are meant to bring down sky-high government debt. in athens, greek union workers went on strike against proposed layoffs of public employees. >> ( translated ): we will continue to fight to overturn this unfair and dead-end policy that is destroying millions of jobs on a national and european level and is driving large swathes of society to poverty and destruction. >> woodruff: in madrid, spaniards joined the protests, unemployment in spain and greece now tops 27%. and for the euro-zone as a whole, it hit a record high 12.1% in march. the human toll behind the data also fueled rallies today in britain, portugal and france, with trade unions and others insisting that spending cuts and tax hikes have killed economic growth. >> ( translated ): we have seen that in spain, in greece, in portugal, in italy, the austerity policies launched by these governments are leading once again to a dead-end. and what we want is precisely to >> woodruff: the arguments over austerity and debt are echoed in washington's debates over budget cuts. a 2010 harvard study, by economists kenneth rogoff and carmen reinhart, concluded that when government debt exceeds 90% of the gross domestic product, the economy shrinks a tenth of a percent. it's frequently cited by republicans, including house budget committee chair paul ryan and utah senator orrin hatch. >> while one might quibble with the particulars of reinhart's and rogoff's assessment, failure to take it seriously, given the recent struggles of the eurozone, amounts to whistling past the graveyard. >> woodruff: this month, researchers at the university of massachusetts did more than quibble. they concluded that annual growth actually tops 2%, even when government debt is high. and, they charged the rogoff- reinhart study included key calculation errors and omitted important post world war ii data from other countries such as australia and new zealand. the furor became fodder for comedian stephen colbert. >> oh please, if ignoring australia, new zealand and canada were a crime everyone in america would be on death row. but come on, 2.2% up, 0.1% down. you say potato, i say eliminate food stamps. >> woodruff: reinhart and rogoff have acknowledged some errors, but they say their conclusions are sound, just the same. other economists say mandatory budget cuts, known as the sequester, are at least partly to blame for the disappointing march jobs report. president obama said as much yesterday. >> it's slowed our growth, it's resulting in people being thrown out of work, and it's hurting folks all across the country. >> woodruff: another picture of the sequester's effects on growth may come friday, when april's unemployment numbers are released. the federal reserve made it in a statement issued after their regular meeting, fed governors wrote cuts in government spending are restraining economic growth. we look at the renewed debate surrounding spending and austerity. robert kuttner is a founder and co-editor of the american prospect magazine. he's the author of a new book, "debtors' prison: the politics of austerity versus possibility." and kevin hassett, an economist who has written papers on this subject. he's served in republican administrations and is now a senior fellow at the american enterprise institute. welcome to you both. robert kuttner to you first, let's start with the united states, what are some examples of policy right now in this country that you believe are hurting economic growth? >> well, we had the new year's deal that president obama made with the republicans that was supposed to head off the so called fiscal cliff. that took about $200 billion out of economy. we raised social security taxes two points. we raised taxes on the top 1% and to compound the damage we have the sequester which was executed in march. those two things together according to the congressional budget office, which say bipartisan outfit, cut the growth rate in half this year from a projected 3% to a projected 1.5%. if you are in a depressed economy and you reduce purchasing power further you are only going to make the economy more depressed and far from getting closer to an improvement to debt ratio you are going to reduce the g.d.p. relative to what it would have been so the debt ratio is getting worse. we've had a realtime experiment both in the united states and in europe in the failure of aws tearity -- austerity poll at thiscies -- policies to dig out of hole they are in. >> woodruff: kevin hassett, do you accept these numbers? >> his numbers are accurate. the 1.5% is the cbo estimate. i did my own in the car over and it was the same. we have to think about what is going on in europe and the unrest and put it in a longer term perspective to understand where we are and what policy decisions we have to make. before the crisis the government spending g.d.p. was about 39% because of expansion policies and biment-in stabilizers like having to pay more unemployment for folks and so on it jumped up. >> woodruff: you are saying it's jumped up? >> it's gone from 44.5 to 4 5.2% so it's his risen but you run out of money if you keep deficit spending up. governments had to ratchet back because they had canessan policies. >> woodruff: you are trying to -- folding europe into the conversation. i was trying to keep them separate. it's not possible, i guess. what about the fact that the spending was out of control before and yes there's been cutbacks but not very much? >> i really wasn't out of control, the biggest single source of increased deficit was the recession and let's not forget what caused the recession. it wasn't government spending being out of control it was a financial collapse made on wall street. if you have a financial collapse, the government collects less revenue and spends a little bit more on things like unemployment compensation and food stamps and so the deficit goes up. but it doesn't logically follow that you can get a recovery going by cutting the deficit. the only thing keeping the economy afloat given the weakness of wages and salaries and private demand and investment, what is keeping it afloat is deficit spending, public spending. and so the time to get the deficit under control is when the economy is bombing. it's not when the economy is in a ditch and that's why these policies don't work. >> woodruff: what about that? that is part of what the federal reserve said today? >> the problem is that a canesian policy is perfect you look at the historic recession that lasted 11 months and grew 6.5% the year after. if we could take the government spending from the 6.5% year and move it to the year with a recession it's a good idea but the problem is we're in a period of slow growth and trying to build a government spending bridge to when we're growing stronger. the other evidence from a different study is that it usually takes a decade to recover from a financial crisis. spending our way out of that is a really, really hard thing to do. and governments haven't been able to sustain it and that's why across the industrialized world serve cut cutting -- every is cutting back on spending. >> woodruff: robert kuttner you are shaking your head. >> it takes a decade to get out a crisis or a year or two depending on what the government does. if you put the economy in a debtor's prison it takes three times as long. the reason i say that is you ruin people's ability to earn a living and they can't help themselves and creditors. there's a terrible double standard in debt. a corporation can get out from under debt by declaring chapter 11. a student debt carries that student to his or her grave. if a parent cosigns a line and the student dies, the parent is still responsible. we have a trillion dollars of student debt. what a gift to give the next generation. mortgage holders can't declare chapter 11 but corporations can. there are huge double standards here. and europe just demonstrates that you can't deflate your way to recovery. the way to get the debt ratio down is to get a recovery going. world wore ii is history's great example. we went from 12% unemployment to 0% in the course of six months because of government spent serious money. the whole view that we'll tighten our belts and the economy will recover is refuted day by day. >> woodruff: you not only kevin that the belt should be tightened you argue for deeper cuts in entitlement programs like social security in this country and equivalent programs in europe. >> the economist lange swig fiscal consolidations and it suggest that's a country has a better long-term growth prospects if it gets ahead of the curve. you want to do it in a measured way. if you look at european nations, for example, they've had a heck of a lot of contractionary fiscal policy. robert was here to mention the tax increases in the u.s. they've had that throughout europe and front loaded them. don't forget. the reason they are doing it is that nobody really wanted to lend to greece because their deficits were so large, policies so unsustainable that the country looked like it might go bankrupt woonch let's send by asking you both what needs to be done in the united states if you could wf a magic wand and have congress do it? robert? >> i don't think you should have the kind of grand bargain that president obama is talking about with the republicans where you cut social security and medicare and in exchange the republicans agree to raise taxes and you have ten more years of austerity. i think in the next year or two until the economy gets back on its feet, you need public spending to get people back to work, rebuild the infrastructure and make it more competitive and when you get back to something close to full employment, people have jobs and are paying taxes, then you can reduce the debt because you have a higher growth rate and the debt ratio comes down on its own accord. that's the time to rebalance. >> woodruff: would that be your remedy? >> i think the headline for listeners is not what i want but what has happened. if you look at the cbo's unless of what president obama and the republicans have agreed to and they stabilized the debt at a reasonable level about the average of the last 20 years relatively quickly. my guess is given that there's a lot of posturing in washington but they are not going to do much more either way. there won't be more tax increases or big spending cuts. i think listeners should know despite the rhetoric they've made progress already. >> woodruff: the debate, and it is a debate, goes on. kevin hassett, robert kuttner, thank you both. >> thank you. >> ifill: the deaths of more than 400 factory workers in bangladesh hung over "may day "protests in asia today. ray suarez reports. >> suarez: demands for higher pay and better working conditions brought out thousands of low-wage workers across southeast asia. they marched in indonesia, cambodia, the philippines, and elsewhere. >> ( translated ): for wages, we call on the new government to increase pay for all garment workers and for civil servants, police and military personnel of at least one million riels. >> ( translated ): the change in the rotten system prevailing in society is really in the hands of the workers and ordinary people. >> suarez: this year, the annual "may day" rallies were fueled by outrage over the deadly collapse of an eight-story building in bangladesh. the illegally-built structure housed several garment factories that employed thousands of workers. the death toll has now passed 400, but it remains unclear how many are still missing. today, bangladeshis filled the streets in the capital of dhaka, carrying the memories of those lost in last week's tragedy. >> ( translated ): the workers who were killed in the building collapse, we protest and we demand that the owner of the building must be given capital punishment. he should be hanged and compensation should be given to the injured and those who died. a healthy and safe atmosphere should be made in the factories. >> suarez: officials also began burying dozens of victims who could not be identified. hundreds attended the mass funeral and burial, many covering their noses to combat the smell of the decomposing bodies. more mass burials are expected in the coming days. at the building site, heavy machinery has been brought in to remove the many tons of rubble that remain. officials have given up on finding any more survivors; the focus now is on recovering the dead. meanwhile, the building owner is in custody. he left a court yesterday wearing a police helmet and bulletproof vest, following his second appearance in as many days. he's one of eight people arrested thus far. for more on working conditions in the developing world i'm joined by pietra rivoli, an expert on the globalization of clothing manufacturing and a professor of finance and international business at georgetown's mcdonough school of business. and david von drehle is a journalist for time magazine, he wrote "triangle, the fire that changed america," a book about this country's response to its own factory disaster. professor rivoli as we saw there were marchs throughout south asia. is this work generally badly paid and dangerous? >> well, i don't think we can make a general conclusion about that. there are good factories, there are good conditions. there are safe factories, and we have experience though at the other end of spectrum as well. of course, what happened last week was an example of conditions at the very bottom. >> suarez: what has changed about the rules governing global trade? how did bangladesh end up the home of the garment industry's -- it's the secretary largest garment industry in the world? >> that's right. in 2005, we did away with a system of apparel trade regulation in the united states that very tightly managed apparel imports into the country. so we didn't have a free market at that time. instead different countries were allowed to sell different quantities of clothing to the united states. when those regulations were lifted, we went to apure market system -- a pure market system. most flowed to china but however in the last couple of years wage rates in china have shot up in the apparel industry. they've doubled and in some areas even tripled, so the production has moved to lower cost areas such as bangladesh. so what happened really is you have a tremendously rapid flow of production from one country to another and certainly the infrastructure, the safety infrastructure, the construction infrastructure, the codes of conduct and so forth they are scrambling to keep up. >> suarez: david von drehle we're a little century away from the try angle factory fire. 100 people died, mostly young women died in one afternoon. is there a rough parallel between places in bangladesh and cambodia today with what was going on in manhattan in 1911? >> absolutely, ray. the guest made a very good point and used terrific language when she talked about a runaway industry with the government regulators sort of trying to catch up to them. that's exactly what happened in the united states at the turn of the century when the ready to wear garment industry made-to-measure garment industry took off like a lightning bolt. suddenly we had factories throughout new york, philadelphia, chicago that were churning out millions of dollars worth of clothing and the governments were in the prepared to deal with these new realities. you had not just the triangle fire, the most famous, but these kind of factory disasters frequently happening. what i found as i studied the triangle fire, which was a catalyst for change s that the real driver is not sympathy or outrage at these terrible tragedies, which are definitely tragic, but the rising power of the workers, more education for workers, more power especially for women in the workplace. and as they make -- and more enfranchisement, opportunity to vote. these are the factors that drive out corruption and bring on in its place a respect for the lives of the human beings who do the work. >> suarez: professor given what david von drehle just described, these are young democracies where we saw the marchs going on today. could this be a similar galvanizing moment? >> you know, i think that the shirt waist fire was certainly a tipping point in the u.s. industrial history. and is there are tipping points all across the world in industrial him. i think it's quite possible that this event last week will serve as a tipping point. but there are enormous challenges in the political infrastructure of bangladesh. if you look at why that building was ever even built the way it was, you know, the root causes have to do with corruption at the local level, with systems of graft. you have just kind of mob bosses in charge at the local political level. so there's a tremendous amount of cleaning up of the political infrastructure that needs to happen before people's political voices can be effective. >> suarez: david, is there also a risk here for the workers if things are tightened up? if there are better conditions in the factories? if wages are raised? there a chance that you are taking that international producers will head to even lower-cost places, if you can find them left on planet earth? >> this is the great paradox of the more developed economies trying to influence this process. because the reason that there were so many workers in that factory laboring under such appalling conditions is that there's desperate poverty in bangladesh. and they are actually working their way up to those jobs, if you can believe it. same was true in the united states 100 years ago. those workers in the triangle factory were there because it was a good job compared to the alternatives. what we have to find in the united states and other developed countries is ways to pressure our retailers, our manufacturers, our brands to engage, perhaps with these issues of corruption that the professor talked about which is so important. we who live under the rule of law tend to take it for granted. it is a huge engine for our safety, our protection, our economic freedom and that's what we need to be exporting to the countries along with low-wage jobs. >> suarez: david von drehle, professor rivoli, thank you both. >> thank you very much. >> woodruff: in northern california, there's an unusual battle brewing over a renowned oyster farm that's located in a national seashore. the fight is playing out among business, government and some environmentalists. but it's one that's creating strange bedfellows concerned about the outcome. spencer michels reports. >> reporter: the drakes bay oyster company at point reyes national seashore north of san francisco may be producing its last crop. when its long-term lease expired last year, the department of the interior said the lease was terminated, and ordered the family-owned company to stop planting and harvesting oysters, as the farm has done since the 1930s. and that has provoked a battle with an unlikely cast of characters. the repercussions extend far beyond this spectacular pacific coast enclave to the restaurants of the bay area and all the way to washington d.c., where politicians of both parties are joining in the fight. much of the area in the national seashore has been designated wilderness, and the then secretary of the interior has said the oyster farm doesn't fit in a wilderness area, since it's a commercial operation. so he ordered it closed in march. the company sued to stop its eviction, and a federal court has allowed operations to continue while it considers the case. >> this lease has an explicit renewal clause. it was always anticipated that it could be renewed by special use permit. it says it right in the original document. >> reporter: kevin lunny is the principal player: a longtime rancher, one of the owners of the drakes's bay oyster company. its 30 employees plant and harvest six to eight million oysters a year from the waters of drake's estero-- an inlet from the ocean. he bought the oyster operation seven years ago, knowing that his lease would expire in 2012. but he tried to change that. >> this is exactly what was planned for the seashore. the oyster farm is part of the working landscape, it's part of the agriculture. it's really part of the history, part of the culture that was always expected to be preserved. >> reporter: local and national environmental groups have joined the frey. they say a lease is a lease and that a larger principle is involved. amy trainer is heads one organization. >> under the 1964 wilderness act, commercial operations and motorboats are not allowed. they're expressly prohibited so this operation is wholy incompatible with this national park wilderness area. this is a very dangerous precedent. drakes estero is considered the ecological heart of the national seashore, and it absolutely should be protected for future generations without commercial uses. >> reporter: in fact, all the players agree: point reyes is a unique and gorgeous land of tule elk, hiking trails, elephant and harbor seals, wildflowers, grass-covered hills and a few cattle ranches that pre-date the seashore and remain in place under the law. this sparsely populated area became part of the national park system in 1962, and today two and a half million people visit a year. but what appeared to be primarily a local dispute, has become a conservative cause 3,000 miles away in washington. critics see government as trampling on economic freedom. a national advocacy group called cause of action, a government watchdog, has taken on lunny's case. dan epstein, an attorney who once worked for a foundation run by one of the conservative activist koch brothers, is the group's executive director. >> what we're doing with cases like the drakes bay oyster company is to educate the public that when you have a federal government that in some cases is unchecked, it can lead to certain harms to economic freedom. >> reporter: epstein says the secretary of the interior's decision to close the operation should be reviewed by the courts. >> if agencies are able to effectively shut down a business, just in the discretion of their policy authority, without following certain legal procedures and the constitution, that's going to have an impact upon small business owners and individuals in terms of their economic rights. i think this situation has been hijacked by interest groups with different agendas, who have spun out narratives that have no relationship to the facts. >> reporter: another washington attorney, former assistant secretary of the interior tom strickland, has joined the battle. he says shutting down the oyster farm will clear the way for establishing an underwater marine wilderness area at pt. reyes, and he defends former secretary ken salazar's action. >> he determined that the people of the united states had in fact bought and paid for that oyster farm, had given the then owner a 40 year term. when that term expired then that land and that right was to return to the people. and then that area will become our first marine wilderness area in the lower 48. >> reporter: the controversy has split the environmental community, and made strange bedfellows. california democratic senator dianne feinstein asked that lunny's lease be extended 10 years, claiming the park service acted unfairly and with bias. a group of restaurant owners and sustainable food advocates, including alice waters of chez panisse, are supporting lunny and his oysters. 85-year-old environmental activist phyllis faber is now fighting against the interior department and its allies. >> they yearn for wilderness, but do you know, there hasn't been wilderness in this park in the point reyes seashore area for probably 200 years. so i look at them as being sort of backward looking, yearning for something that can't possibly exist. it's almost like a religion. >> reporter: yet, she's not happy to be on the same side as cause of action. >> i am very disturbed by that, and i don't agree with it at all. what i think what they're headed for is trying to use a commercial operation in a park, they want to establish that in other public on other public lands. and i think that's terribly unfortunate. >> reporter: all this controversy has overwhelmed the little marin county town of point reyes station, where lunny and his oysters are popular. the controversy is so intense that many residents wouldn't comment for fear of alienating their neighbors. but a few did risk it. >> i don't care for oysters personally to eat, but i think the oyster farm is a wonderful thing for our area. they're good for the environment. they create a lot of jobs. they're wonderful people. and it's sustainable. >> my concern is that the precedent will be that it will be okay then to go into other parks and we'll have less and less wilderness. >> reporter: the battle intensified recently, when republican senator david vitter of louisiana included a provision to extend to oyster farm's lease for at least ten years in a bill primarily designed to expedite the keystone xl pipeline and oil and gas development in alaska. in marin county, the environmental action committee is leading the charge to get rid of the oyster operation. >> you can see all these outflow tubes. they just had a cease and desist order placed on them by the california coastal commission. >> reporter: amy trainer, the committee's executive director, is working with neal desai of the national parks conservation association to convince the courts and the public that the oyster farm doesn't belong in a wilderness area. they say, drakes bay oyster company has despoiled the estuary. >> they have grown non native species, they have dumped thousand of pieces of plastic into our marine waters which can potentially harm seabirds and marine mammals. it's polluted our national seashore beaches. you see the invasive species called marine vomit growing all over their oysters. you see their motoboats zooming by. >> reporter: lunny and his defenders say the operation has not hurt the environment. both sides quote studies supporting their point of view. >> it's been studied by the national academy of sciences; they have found no serious effects; we are not losing marine debris; we're actually cleaning it up. >> reporter: in fact, the national academy of sciences complained there wasn't enough data to determine whether the oyster operation was harming the waterway. but that's only part of the issue, says former interior official strickland. >> i think the question now is who's looking out for the american taxpayer? and who gets to profit from a favorable lease arrangement with the united states? one family? what's the particular equity in that? >> reporter: a hearing in federal appeals court on whether drakes bay oysters should close is scheduled for mid may. >> ifill: today marks the second anniversary of the raid that killed osama bin laden. tonight, we bring you the previously unknown story of the sisterhood of c.i.a. analysts who chased the al qaeda leader. margaret warner reports. >> warner: it was the news most americans had waited nearly a decade to hear >> today, at my direction, the after a firefight, they killed osama bin laden and took custody of his body. >> warner: but for many of the people who'd helped find osama bin laden, their work had started nearly two decades earlier, long before the most- wanted man on earth had earned his infamy. their story of the c.i.a. analysts and officers who'd tracked down the al qaeda chief is told in the documentary hbo film "manhunt", debuting tonight. it's based on the book by cnn's peter bergen. >> in 1997 osama bin laden had declared war on the united states and no one was paying attention. >> there was just warning after warning. we knew something huge was going to happen. >> warner: but long before that september day, their chase began in a near-total information vacuum. >> well we certainly didn't know that al qaeda existed. we didn't know there was a terrorist organization. we knew there was a very wealthy >> warner: the group tracking the elusive saudi militant was known as alec station, and was novel in its approach. >> the unique thing about alec station was the fusion of analysis and operations. we pushed the analysts and the >> warner: the analytical team at c.i.a. was comprised mostly of women; before 9/11 it was not a prime assignment. cindy storer was an analyst, part of what was called "the sisterhood." >> i was counseled once in a performance review that i was spending too much time working on bin laden. they said we were obsessed crusaders, overly emotional, using those women stereotypes. >> warner: nada bakos followed storer on the mostly female team. >> we picked up that end of the spear, where some of the operations officers tended to be men. and this is the place where >> warner: after 9/11, the tempo of operations shifted, to hunting al qaeda figures in afghanistan, iraq and elsewhere. many analysts moved into new jobs as targeters. nada bakos was among them, forward deployed in iraq to track abu musab al zarqawi. she also targeted a key al qaeda emissary who, after capture, gave up the rier who eventually led the u.s. to bin laden's door two years ago today. >> warner: joining me now to discuss the hunt nor bin laden and al qaeda i'm joined by two members of so called "sisterhood" of c.i.a. analysts who appear in the film "manhunt" and whose work was so crucial to the effort. cindy storer and nada bake yoas. like most c.i.a. analysts you worked in secret. your identities have been kept secret all these years. why did you decide to speak to openly through this film? nada? >> i wanted to tell the first-hand account story for essentially a lot of people still there in addition to my former colleagues. i thought it was a good opportunity to be able to give the viewer a sense of what national security is like and how the c.i.a. works. >> warner: cindy, what about you? >> my motivations were very similar. on a personal level i really hoped it would help people understand what our colleagues are doing and they wouldn't be faceless colleagues in the bureaucracy that you could put blame on for whatever is wrong. >> warner: this was informally your unit was known as the sisterhood. do you think there's something different about women analysts? >> it's funny because i honestly don't know. i've gone through so many theories with so many people. for me personally i never thought of myself as a woman except when he we were lumped together by people trying to criticize the program. other than that i was an analyst doing what needed to be done. >> what was the hardest thing. let's go back to the 90s. when you were trying to piece together the puzzle that was al qaeda, the organization what was the biggest challenge in recognizing and identifying what looked like separate attacks around the world from east africa bombings to the cole were the work of one organization and the name was al qaeda and osama bin laden was the head of it? >> there's the technically difficult if is, if will you, of -- if you will, of trying to go through the mounds of bits of information and make it -- see if there's a picture there. to do it you have to have several models in your head about how organizations like like how they work. how they might not work. what could it be beside a organization and you are constantly testing the organization you get against the ideas in your head and then it's something you recognize or something you don't. >> how was the work that this unit did, viewed, let's say before 9/11 within the agency? >> you know, when i joined in 2000 i was not in the counterterrorism center but my understanding and cindy, you weigh in on this, is that, you know counter terrorism work wasn't initially viewed as important as some of the traditional analytical work. >> most analysts in the agency it's scholarly really. it's a combination between scholarship and journalism, a lot of job is, and doing counterterrorism is a little bit different. not that they you are not achieg the scholarship on the issues you about digging down to the details most people don't have to worry about. if you are working a country you know the wiring diagram, how the state is organize even if you have to figure out who has the power well. a group like this we had to figure out they existed. doing that kind of detailed worked was looked down upon. >> warner: then in 2001, your unit and the c.i.a. in general was warping the administration, the -- warning the administration, the rest of the government that something big was coming and yet 9/11 happened. when that happened did you blame yourselves or were you angry at the criticism that it was due to an intelligence failure? >> you can't help but feel guilty and blame yourself even if there really is nothing more you could have done. it's just human nature. yes, it was difficult for everyone blaming you for something you tried so hard to prevent. >> warner: nada, what would you add to that? >> for the large part everybody takes their job seriously. that sense of responsibility is not lost on the people who do that job. to have to point out that there was maybe some issues leading up to 9/11 or points missed, certainly people doing the work understood exactly what had happened. >> warner: after 9/11, the units and -- expanded but really shifted to focusing on targeting individuals for kill or capture. how big a shift was that? >> you know, from my perspective, it was pretty dramatic i went from a traditional analytical role and moved to the operations side. even informally there were obviously people doing that targeting work. >> warner: when targeting, you are targeting someone to be capt tiewrnd interrogated or killed. what kind of a moral dilemma did that pose for you? you talked about it in the film a little. >> i do. when you -- you are evaluating the problem. if it's determined that this person or individual is doing something that is harming the united states national security interest or doing something within the country and in this case it was a war theater inside of iraq, it's -- i think the onus is upon us to be able to control the situation. and the only way to do that is to capture or kill an individual, then i think it's warranted. >> warner: after decades working on this, bin laden is dead, a lot of al qaeda senior leadership is dead. how confident are each of you that the united states is going to be able to manage this ongoing threat in the decades to come? cindy? >> that's a hard question because obviously you know as we go to the future decades we're not just looking at this threat. there's something new coming down the line. it's probably going to look different. as we always do we focus on the current, the current war which we have to do. i'm always concerned that we're not going to listen to the next people standing and jumping up and down with their hair on fire trying to get people's attention to something new and different. >> warner: nada bakos and cindy storer thank you. >> ifill: online, margaret compares "manhunt" with some of the other recent retellings of the hunt for bin laden. find that on our world page. >> woodruff: again, the major developments of the day: three additional men were arrested in connection with the boston bombings, charged with disposing of evidence or lying to investigators, after the fatal blasts. and thousands of people protested in european capitals against austerity measures on this may day. >> ifill: online: why antarctica's response to climate change has puzzled scientists. hari sreenivasan has more. >> sreenivasan: on science wednesday, we look at why different regions of antarctica are melting faster while others are holding steady. and on art beat-- a story of love, devotion, separation and reunion-- all between a cat and its human owners. all that and more is on our website newshour.pbs.org. gwen? >> ifill: and that's the "newshour" for tonight. on thursday, we'll examine the book, "the new digital age" with it's authors: google's eric schmidt and jared cohen. i'm gwen ifill >> woodruff: and i'm judy woodruff. we'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. thank you and good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. celebrating 100 years of philanthropy at carnegie.org. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers 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