up his series about the top to bottom efforts by a school superintendent to reform the new orleans public education system after hurricane katrina. >> making promises, talking publicly about all the big changes he's going to make in the schools. well, it's been three years, time for paul vallas's report card. >> brown: and we look at the impact of the americans with disabilities act on this, the 20th anniversary of the law. >> he didn't come because politicians thought it was a good idea. it came because people with disabilities fought and said we're going to be equal. we're going to have access. >> woodruff: that's all ahead on tonight's newshour. major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: 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. >> brown: the huge document dump on the war in afghanistan opened questions today about pakistan's role, the afghan government, and u.s. military actions. it also put the u.s. debate on the war back on the front page. >> it's one of the largest disclosures of classified military information in u.s. history. last night the whistle-blowing web site wikileaks.organize released documents on the afghan war. the nonprofit organization gave the information to the "new york times", the british newspaper "the guardian" and the german mack several weeks ago. each did additional reporting and agreed to withhold publication until wikileaks released it first . >> brown: speaking to the guardian wikileaks founder defended the decision to release this material. >> in this case, it will show the true nature of this war. and then the public from afghanistan and other nations can see what is going on and take steps to address the problems. >> brown: the enormous cache of files span a period of january 2004 to as recent as december 2009. before president obama competed to a further build-up of troops. "the new york times" reported new evidence that pakistan's intelligence service the isi helped the taliban. one example, ham i had goul former head of the isi was said to urge taliban leaders to focus inside afghan sta in exchange for pakistan turning a blind eye to the presence of thanks forces on its territory. goul spoke to the newshour in a 2002 report after he had retired from the isi. according-- according to cnn... hate mark now because of what america has done and what america is doing. fbi milling around. midnight knocks on doors. and under the pretext of hunting for al qaeda. >> brown: today goul called the new allegations absolute nonsense. other files in the wikileaks probe suggested insurgents had fired heat seeking missiles at applied aircraft, something never publicly acknowledged. and the guardian and der spiel gel said there were unreported attacks of coalition troops killing hundreds of afghan civilians. the documents were mostly low level field reports. >> they don't include top secret reports. they don't include most reports from u.s. special forces. they don't include reports by the cia. >> brown: he also likened the leak to the opening of secret police arkives in east germany. a number of reports have linked the leak of the information to bradley manning, a 22-year-old u.s. army enlisted intelligence analyst. he was arrested in late may after leaking helicopter cockpit video from a 2007 baghdad fire fight. in the meantime, this latest leak dominated today's white house briefing. spokesman robert gibbs warned there will be fallout. >> whenever you have the potential for names and for operations and for programs to be out there in the public domain, that it, besides being against the law has the potential to be very harmful to those that are in our military, those that are cooperating with our military and those that are working to keep us safe. >> brown: also today pakistan's ambassador to the u.s. insisted his country is committed to fighting al qaeda and the taliban. he said the leaked information does not reflect the current situation. and a spokesman for afghan president karzai had this to say. >> by the fact that certain number, a huge number of documents were leaked, that was a shocking news. but so far the substance of this leaked documents were that the president's immediate reaction was that most of this is not new. most of this is what has been discussed in the past. >> brown: even as the document debate heated up president karzai said 52 afghan civilians had died in a nato rocket attack last fly. but a nato spokesman today could not confirm any civilian deaths. >> lehrer: and for a for a closer look at this, we're joined by two people who've written widely on the war. steve coll is president of the new america foundation and a staff writer at the "new yorker." his latest book is "the bin ladens: an arabian family in the american century." and philip smucker is an independent journalist and documentary filmmaker. he's author of "my brother, my enemy: america and the battle of ideas across the islamic world." . steve coll, as an overview first, are we learning specific new things here or is it a matter involve of seeing it in new detail and official documents? >> i think it's more a matter of seeing it in new detail and official documents. there are bits and pieces and suggestive new evidence of witness reports of isi collaboration with the taliban. you mentioned earlier the possibility of new evidence about civilian deaths in special operations, raids. and some eye witness reports of heat seeking missiles. but i have to say obviously i haven't read all 70,000 documents but the excerpts that are available, the testimony in some of these documents is here say, wouldn't be courtroom ready evidence. these are eye witness reports that often in the case of aircraft incidents turn out to be unreliable. and the testimony about isi is almost all paid informants who claim to be someplace where the writer of the report wasn't also present. >> brown: phil smucker, what jumps out at you? >> well, the preponderance of evidence that the pakistani military is turning a blind eye, and there's something of a discussion now between whether the guardian is right to say there's no smoking gun and that "new york times", leading with this information. up on the border, it is almost a mute point because you have the pakistani military located there and often they are just continuing with their business, not watching the jihadis as they go up into the mountains, cross into afghanistan to kill americans. >> brown: stay there for a moment with you. these are as we said kind of lowsks level reports. now is that affect how you read it, i mean the rawness of some of these or the unvetted nature of some of these reports? >> well, certainly these are... they're not like the pentagon papers. this is a broad overview of what is going on, the nity gritty at the small american bases. which is kind of astounding, really, because it exposes even what the special forces are doing and the tactics. so it should be a huge embarrassment to the pentagon. >> brown: so steve coll you started by saying some of the caveats you see in this. what is most significant to you in your reading so far? >> well, i agree with philip that there is a preponderance of evidence even though some of it is tainted and dubious. that reminded us of a historical pattern which u.s. officials have occasionally commented on but which is often is reluctant to be fully honest about in my opinion which is that there is no reason to believe that the pakistani intelligence service has altered its historical collaboration with the taliban in pursuit of what it imagines to be its national interest in afghanistan. at the same time, that government is a major non-nato ally of the united states in receipt of many hundreds of millions of dollars from u.s. taxpayers. it should be unacceptable for the united states to have an ally actively collaborat with militias that are attacking and killing american soldiers, and if these documents raise that question, force it into the light, then i think that is a constructive contribution. >> brown: let's try to walk through some of the other particulars, phil smucker. one of them that got a lot of attention is the report that the taliban used perhaps used heat seeking missiles. what is the significance. >> well, we have seen sophisticated chinese weapons. these are service to air weapons. they are not stinger missiles. not to be confused with the stingers. but one thing we can confirm covering the story over the last four years is that a lot of the tactics that have come from iraq are being transfered-- transferred by al qaeda in pakistan. it's almost a value-added, what al qaeda is giving to the taliban in pakistan. then they are taking it across the border to attack the americans. >> brown: steve coll, what would you add to that on the heat seeking missiles? >> well, i think the reports that have been excerpted, quote eye witnesses to the crashing of helicopters, apparently struck by missiles. that could well be an indication of the use of chinese or other missiles. i just take note as a journalist who has covered these things for a long time is that the world's most unreliable witnesss are those that claim to see air disasters from the ground because just the eye isn't very reliable but perhaps there is much richer material than that available. i actually think that the granular accounts of corruption by the afghan government at the local level and the toll of sillian casualties in mistaken raids are probably even more significant than the rest. because they remind us that this war at the local level is experienced often as one in which neither the afghan government nor the noble intentions of the united states translate into the experience of ode afghans. >> brown: what do you make of that? certainly a lot of attention today on the number of what appear to be undocumented strikes against civilians. >> well, i think the bigger problem there is creating a policy that compensates for civilians when they're injured and killed. because as general petraeus has said, certainly this summer is going to be bloodier than last summer. it could be the worst summer we've seen. and the american public has to be prepared for that. but they have to know that the u.s. government cares about the civilians. and there are going to be accidents. and the bigger problem is that we don't see in these reports a policy that really compensates properly for each case across-the-board. >> brown: what about, let me stay with you, what about one other particular which is the detail on the covert effort by u.s. special forces to go after top taliban leaders, again something that there has been a lot of talk about. and i think people sort of know is happening but here we get more detail. >> right. and i think it's almost unclear, this is a very bird eye view of what they are doing. is this -- can it be qualified as target add sass nation. we certainly know that that is going on in pakistan with the drones. when we get a beat on an al qaeda leader we attack with a drone. i think that the special forces are going on raids and those raids often become bloody. now that's war. that's not targeted assassination. >> brown: what do you make of that, steve coll, more detail on those kinds of operations. >> well, we've known since 9/11 that much of the eastern and southern afghanistan operations have been turned over to a combination of u.s. special forces and cia para mill tarees and that their main mission has been to identify, capture or kill taliban leaders so i don't think in principal the mission is surprising. i think it's useful to see it in its specificity to understand its complexity, the nature of the mistakes that are made, the consequences of those mistakes with the broader strategy of persuading afghans that the international community is still a constructive partner of their efforts to reclaim their country. but the basic idea that we're out there shooting bad guys in eastern afghanistan doesn't strike me as new. >> brown: and steve coll, just to help our audience here there is so much more in this. but just help people understand, as someone who has covered the military intelligence for quite a while, how does something like this even happen, that all of these classified documents become public. >> well, obviously we don't know. and wikileaks isn't saying and whatever the three news organizations that partnered with them learned about the origin of the documents, if anything, they're not disclosing. i guess we can observe that after 9/11 one of the criticisms of the intelligence community was that there wasn't enough sharing and that information even at fairly low levels of classification tended to be compartmented into boxes. and we saw in the run-up to 9/11 example approximates of how that got in the way of effective investigations and effective action. and so there was a big push after 9/11 to encourage the intelligence community through its technology systems and its protocols to share information. and to make it accessible. it would seem that a single individual, i don't know whether that will be born out or not. but somebody had access to quite a lot of documents it is notable that the low level of classification in the world we live in, 90,000 secret documents sounds like a lot but we don't actually know the total universal. it could be millions. and in any event, most sensitive operational information in the u.s. system is kept at the top secret or even more secret compartmented information level. and so far as i know, none or not much of that in this batch. >> brown: steve coll and philip smucker, thank you both very much. >> thanks. >> thank you. >> still to come on the newshour, the wikileaks phenomenon, judgement day in cambodia, the status of public education in new orleans, and the 20th anniversary of the americans with disabilities act. but first, the other news of the day, here's hari sreenivasan in our news room. >> the embattled chief executive of b.p. tony hayward, is on his way out. reports today said he is expected to take a job with b.p.'s joint venture in russia. hayward came under fire for his handling of the oil spill cleanup. hayward's likely replacement is widely assumed to be bob dudley, the current point man in dealing with the oil spill. and in the gulf, crews headed back to work after remnants of tropical storm "bonnie" cleared out. retired coast guard admiral thad allen said the job is a long way from done.a- e'll continue where we reimmmediate where oil has come to shore. that will still be aggressive, there still oil out there. we still have the possibility that the shore will be impacted i guess for the next four to six weeks so we will continue to monitor that as we move forward. >> sreenivasan: allen also said a relief well could drill into the blown well in order to plug it by the end of next week. in mexico, federal authorities pursued allegations that prison officials have let inmates carry out mass killings for drug cartels. the latest was last week, when hitmen stormed a birthday party in torreon. they killed 17 people and wounded 18. on sunday, federal prosecutors said the prison staff, including the director, released the inmates and let them use the guards' weapons and official vehicles. wall street extended its recent gains for a third day. the dow jones industrial average was up more than 100 points to close at 10,525. the nasdaq rose nearly 27 points to close at 2296. new federal rules will allow the practice commonly known as jailbreaking. it means owners of apple iphones will be able to unlock the phones legally to download software that apple has not approved, and to switch cellular carriers. in addition, theisually impaired will be allowed to break locks on electronic books to have the texts read aloud with special software. those and other exemptions were announced today by the library of congress, which oversees the copyright office. those are some of the day's major stories. now, back to judy. >> brown: and we turn to a judgment in cambodia, narrated by special correspondent fred de sam lazaro. he's been covering the international efforts to bring justice to some of those involved in the "killing fields" genocide. >> cambodians gathered across the country to watch today's proceedings in phnom penh at homes, cafes and community centres like this one . >> the former jailer for the communist khmer rouge also known as ... watchesed as his sentence was read, the 67 year ol was found guilty of overseeing the deaths of thousands of come bodeians in the late 1970s during its time of the killing fields. >> the majority of the chamber sentences ... to a single sentence of 75 years of imprisonment. >> reporter: the judges shaved off 16 years for time served and for his illegal detention in a military prison. it was the first ever verdict rendered by the u.n.-backed tribuneal on the cambodian genocide. but it sparked anger among survivors and family members who were in the courtroom today, expecting a much longer sentence. >> i'm not happy. my people are not happy. i'm angry once again. we suffered once under the khmer rouge. and now we are suffering again. >> reporter: now an american human rights lawyer lost both parents at the prison that he oversaw. >> it comes down to serving 11 and a half hours per life that he took. which is just not comprehensible or acceptable. >> reporter: rob hamill's brother was one of the few personer-- werners to die under the regime after his sailboat was captured by account khmer rouge in 1978. >> all i can say is that my family who are no longer here to see justice, would not want to see this man walk free even if it is in 19 years time. >> reporter: but the trial commenced two years ago, few cambodians knew much about the international court which has three cambodian and two foreign judges. two-thirds of today's cambodians weren't even born when cat mere rouge were in power. the regime's kingpins are either elderly or long dead, including the recluseive leader pol pot. their pen guide -- genocidal legacy, 2 million deaths is memorialized in modest museums visited by cambodian and foreign tourists, these include the high school dok supervised when it was converted into a prison for-- where some 15,000 people died. several nongovernment organizations and the court itself launched campaigns to educate the cambodian public about the legal proceedings. tens of thousands of citizens and schoolkids from around the country have been bused in on field trips. >> hello and welcome to the 22nd program in our series dok on trial. >> and for several months as many as 2 million cambodians tuned in to a weekly tv show about the trial. >> now we are going to see a selection of evidence given to the court about some of the crimes with which dok has been charged. >> reporter: like the court the tv series was funded by international donors. >> you think the trial has gone well. the process has been pretty impressive. i've supported it because i was one of the victims. i was in prison under the regime. >> reporter: the khmer rouge reg eel i'm fell three decades but the tribuneal was slowed first by cold war politics and for examples with the reluctant cambodian government some of whose leaders were young lieutenants although none will stand trial. still, a person who helped start a group called the victims association says the court sends an important message. >> when you commit a crime, there will be people who try to put you, to take you into account. these are one of the lessons that the young generation can learn. >> reporter: until recently young cambodians were never formally taught khmer rouge history. a survivor has worked to change that. >> this is the textbook for