60 Minutes - 01/28/2024: Agency in Crisis, Interpol, Modern Ark

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

Cecilia Vega interviews the woman charged with reforming the Federal Bureau of Prisons, director Colette S. Peters, as her agency is facing a major staffing crisis, aging, and deteriorating prison infrastructure and an alarming pattern of abuse that has persisted for years. Interpol, responsible for coordinating worldwide police cooperation, has come under some fire. Some members are accused of abusing its red notice system. Bill Whitaker speaks with Interpol's Secretary General Jürgen Stock. Pat Craig, founder of The Wild Animal Sanctuary in Colorado, has emerged as the go-to guy for orchestrating high-stakes animal rescues around the world. Jon Wertheim reports on Craig’s most ambitious mission yet. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But, but, we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing, or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully, make you see the world anew. Radiolab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcasts.

People drive past prisons every day. Yeah, they're terrified of them. Or they don't think about them at all. Right? It's kind of like this forgotten zone. I don't want people to forget about this place. The United States federal prison system has 157,000 inmates in its custody and locks up some of the most dangerous and high-profile criminals in the world. Tonight, we will take you inside the Federal Bureau of Prisons, an agency in crisis.

On the banks of the Rhone River by a tranquil city park sits the highly secure global headquarters of Interpol. 196 countries are members of Interpol and share important intelligence about worldwide criminal activity. But there are questions about why some of those countries are still part of its alliance. I'm just trying to understand how a country that is being investigated for mass murder can be a member in good standing with Interpol. 60 Minutes has discovered tigers roaming in the wilds of Colorado? And elephants in Georgia? How or why did these animals end up here? Meet the modern-day Noah,

who looks out for nature's greatest beasts during their greatest times of need. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Scott Pelley.

Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes. At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radiolab, adventures on a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully, make you see the world anew.

Radiolab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcasts. The United States federal prison system has 157,000 inmates in its custody.

It locks up some of the most dangerous and high-profile criminals in the world. Serial killers and terrorists are among those inside its 122 prisons, which include supermax penitentiaries and minimum security camps. The cost to American taxpayers is more than $8 billion a year. Tonight, we will take you inside the Federal Bureau of Prisons, an agency in crisis.

A series of government investigations has found the Bureau's workforce is dangerously understaffed, and inside its women's prisons, there is an alarming pattern of abuse. Colette Peters is in charge of fixing the Bureau of Prisons. She's the sixth director in six years. This is Aliceville, a low-security women's prison in rural Alabama where more than 1,400 inmates are serving time. People drive past prisons every day. Yeah, they're terrified of them. Or they don't think about them at all, right? It's kind of like this forgotten zone. I don't want people to forget about this place.

Colette Peters became director of the Bureau of Prisons in August 2022. After a 20-year career in corrections, she's built a reputation as a reformer. I love your poster. We are all stronger than we think, aren't we? Before becoming director, she was credited with shaping Oregon's state prison system by prioritizing staff mental health support and advocating for the compassionate treatment of inmates. I have this very early memory in kindergarten where an individual came in with a pocket knife and was marched to the principal's office.

And I just remember in that moment saying, I want to help him. Many people in your custody are there because of horrific crimes. Why do they deserve compassion? Because 95% of them are going to come back to our communities someday. And I want them to be productive, taxpaying citizens who no longer commit crimes. But the Bureau of Prisons is so inadequately staffed,

it is struggling to fulfill its mission, rehabilitating inmates and keeping its prisons safe. Government watchdogs have documented disrepair in all of its institutions, requiring more than $2 billion in fixes. And employees rank the Bureau of Prisons the worst place to work in the federal government. It's very rare for the media to be allowed inside a federal prison. Why are we here? I truly believe in transparency. Are we perfect?

No. Do we have issues we need to resolve? Absolutely. But I want people to see the good stuff. We toured Aliceville with Director Peters and saw where inmates live, learn new trades, and work. On this day, sewing sleeping bags for the military, a coveted job because it pays $1.15 an hour.

You ladies are amazing. And when you leave here, you're going to be incredible. This ceremony is for inmates graduating from a faith-based program, preparing them for life on the outside by connecting them with community leaders and teaching them life skills like anger management. But the reality is nearly half of federal inmates will end up back behind bars or arrested within three years of getting out. A lot of those faces in there who have so much promise and hope today could end up right back in here. Yeah, you know, I think we have a

lot of work to do to dial down that recidivism rate. We have to send fewer people to prison for shorter periods of time, and then when they're here, do things like this. You also have a major staffing issue, and people can't get these classes that they need. Staffing was a problem before the pandemic, and so that those recruitment efforts and those retention efforts have gotten hard. How many correctional officers do you need on staff to get you out of this staffing crisis? So we hope to have that real number for you and the public very soon. That seems like a critical number. How was that not on your desk when you took this job on day one and still not there a year later?

So the good news is this was a problem the Bureau was trying to solve before I got here and we're in the process of solving it. Director Peters says she expects to have the number of officers needed by October, more than two years after taking office. But Shane Fossey, the recently retired president of the Federal Prison Employees Union, says he knows what that number is now. We're short about 8,000 positions nationwide. How bad is it? It results in one of us losing our lives. And it's that bad. We can't continue with this course.

By the union's count, the Bureau of Prisons is down about 40% of the correctional officers it needs. The less supervision you have, the more bad things happen. Misconduct increases, violence increases. And because there are not enough officers, the Bureau relies on other prison staff to step in. It's a controversial practice called augmentation. Teachers, nurses, doctors, food service people, the people that maintain facilities.

They're doing what now? They're in a housing unit supervising offenders. Do they have training in that? They do. But I can tell you, I'm no better a plumber than they are a correctional officer. I can walk into a housing unit and tell you something's right or something's wrong. You develop that over years of experience. Let's break this down. We are talking about HVAC repairmen and accountants who are now guarding inmates. That doesn't sound safe.

So it is. So they have the exact same training as the correctional officers. Now, what I will say is augmentation should only be used in the short term. We've used this now to solve a long-term retention and recruitment problem, and that isn't right. On this point, the union and management agree. Prison staff, like teachers and doctors, need to be able to do their jobs so that inmates don't lose access to critical services and programs. Their buzz phrase is, everybody's a correctional officer first. That sounds good on

paper, but if you take the teacher out of the classroom and nobody's teaching the offender the skills to go back out to society, we're just back to warehousing people. While we walked the halls of Aliceville, classrooms were packed, but several inmates told us that much of what we saw on our tour was staged. Am I getting a real look at what life is like in here today? Absolutely not. No, definitely not. The staff is very disrespectful here. Even though we make mistakes, when we're out here, we're not treated with respect.

Do you feel safe here? Sometimes. Prison is prison. You feel what I'm saying? Tell me about staffing. There's short staff all the time. There's times where you don't know if you're going to be able to go outside because somebody didn't come to work.

And if you were to speak up about some of these issues that you're telling me about, what would happen? You're going to jail. You're going to the SHU. The SHU, short for Special Housing Unit, is the jail inside a prison, where inmates are segregated from the general population and seldom let outside of their cells. Make you nervous to talk to me right now?

Little bit. The director is coming today. What does she need to know about Aliceville? Fix it. We need more education, more opportunity to grow and rehabilitate, because we don't have that here. I've talked to a handful of inmates here today, and they say, look, you're getting a cleaned up version of what life is really like. I've been

doing this work for a long time, so I can see when things have been swept under the rug, if you will. I'm not naive. And when anybody comes to your house, you clean it up. Of all the issues plaguing the Bureau of Prisons, perhaps none is more disturbing than the rampant sexual abuse of female inmates by the male officers who are supposed to protect them. Women are housed in nearly a quarter of federal prisons, and a 2022 Senate investigation found that Bureau staff have sexually abused female prisoners in at least two-thirds of those facilities over the past decade. Aliceville is no exception. Three officers have been convicted of sexual abuse since 2020, including one who pleaded guilty earlier this month. Those are just the cases that we know about. How does this keep happening? You can't predict human behavior. But what I can tell you is the things that we're putting in place to manage to that misconduct, I think are the right things.

And sending a clear message that this type of behavior is egregious, horrendous, and unexcusable. But female inmates at a women's prison in Northern California accused Director Peters and the Bureau of Prisons of failing to protect them. Its official name is Federal Correctional Institution Dublin, but it's known by inmates and staff as the Rape Club. Seven Dublin officers, including the warden and the chaplain, have been convicted of sexually abusing nearly two dozen inmates from 2018 to 2021. And this past August, eight inmates filed suit claiming sexual abuse continues to this day. These are mothers, their daughters, their sisters.

Tess Korth worked as a correctional officer at Dublin for 25 years. She resigned in 2022 after she says she was retaliated against for whistleblowing. They train us in the red flags to look for. And then when we report, hey, every red flag this guy meets, you need to go deal with this, they don't do anything. What was the chaplain doing that made you suspicious? One time I came in on a weekend, he didn't know I was there.

His office was dark, he had an inmate in there with him, and I don't know what they were doing. That's a red flag. Oh, definitely. Former Officer Korth says she reported the chaplain and other officers who she suspected of sexually abusing inmates to an internal affairs investigator but was ignored for years until federal investigators stepped in. What happened to the officers that you accused?

Most of them have been or are in the process of being convicted. federal investigators stepped in. What happened to the officers that you accused? Most of them have been or are in the process of being convicted, and a lot of them are named in lawsuits right now. How does that make you feel? Good. The Bureau of Prisons has a backlog of nearly 8,000 open misconduct investigations, hundreds of which contain allegations of sexual abuse. Director Peters hired more staff to tackle the backlog, but she says it will take two years to clear those cases. In response to the Dublin lawsuit, Bureau of Prisons lawyers say inmates'

claims have been investigated and that no threat remains. We've done a tremendous job in the last year rebuilding that culture and creating an institution that is more safe, where individuals feel comfortable coming forward and reporting claims. You just used the phrase tremendous job in Dublin. Eight inmates have filed a class action lawsuit, and they've got testimony from more than 40 current and former Dublin inmates who say that the abuse is ongoing. That means the the process is working, that they have the ability to come forward, they have the right to bring that class action lawsuit together.

These Dublin inmates say that they are facing retaliation for speaking out. I have been very clear that retaliation will not be stood on my watch. And so when allegations of retaliation come forward, they are investigated, and we will hold those people accountable. It's one thing for you to say that retaliation is not tolerated, but it sounds like it's actually still happening. Again, I would say those are allegations. I would like to be more grounded in fact around proven retaliation. The fact is that an additional 19 staff members have been accused of abusing inmates. The Bureau says those staff members have been put on leave, new management has been brought in,

and there are now working security cameras in areas where inmates were abused. What are these victims owed? To have individuals who are in our care, who rely on us for their safety and security, and to have that be violated. I don't know that you can bring anything that would undo that wrong. What about an apology? The victims in Dublin say they've never received an apology. Well, I will tell you that it is our mission to keep them safe. That is our job. Is your job to apologize for what happened in Dublin?

I don't know that my job is to apologize. Is it heartbreaking and horrendous to have something like that happen when you are proud of your profession as a corrections professional? Absolutely. In addition to the lawsuit filed this past August, more than 45 current and former Dublin inmates have filed lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by Bureau of Prisons staff. What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool.

Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling.

History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America, decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck, available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a fan of crime novels and movies, you've probably heard of Interpol. The international police organization

was started 100 years ago when 20 countries, including the U.S., came together to fight international crime. Today, it has 196 members, connecting the New York Police Department, Scotland Yard, police in Moscow, Mumbai, Manila. But for all its good work, Interpol has been accused of doing the dirty work of some of

its more repressive members. Russia, for one, has used Interpol to track down people who have run afoul of President Vladimir Putin. We visited Interpol in Lyon, France last fall and found an institution trying to navigate the treacherous path between policing and politics. On the banks of the Rhône River by a tranquil city park sits the highly secure global headquarters of Interpol. For the past decade, it's been led by Jürgen Stock,

a former vice president of the German Federal Police. The purpose of Interpol is still the same, connecting police for a safer world. As Interpol's secretary general, Stock manages operations in Lyon and regional offices on five continents. 900 employees work at the Leon headquarters. Many are police officers on loan from member countries chosen for their expertise. They don't

carry guns or make arrests, but rather collect and share information with law enforcement agencies around the globe. Interpol also has bureaus in each member country, including one in Washington, D.C., managed by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security. So what is the main mission of Interpol? I would describe it as an information broker. We collect, we invite member countries to share information, we do analysis, we enrich the information. So Interpol's information is leading to arrests of high-level criminals,

murderers, drug traffickers, those who are abusing children all around the world. Every single day that happens. Last year, Interpol coordinated a crackdown on human trafficking and prostitution, Operation Global Chain, that led to 212 arrests in 22 countries and the release of more than 1,400 victims forced into criminality. It's been going after one of the world's most powerful crime organizations, Italy-based Endrangheta.

Thanks to Interpol, the second most wanted man in Italy, Rocco Morabito, was arrested in Brazil after 23 years on the run. We were able to identify him through images that were shared that allowed us to be sure it was the guy. Tattoos? Tattoos. Cyril Gou, a forensic expert from the French National Police, oversees 19 massive databases, which are queried 20 million times a day.

They are a compendium of crime, piracy, fugitives, illicit firearms, stolen travel documents. My role is to make this information available to the end users. Your members? The member countries of Interpol. But for me, the customers, the end users, these are the police officers who want to arrest those major criminals and providing them with actionable information everywhere around the world. Interpol has a number of ways to alert its members, including a yellow notice for missing persons, a black notice for unidentified bodies. Perhaps most important, the red notice,

a closely guarded list of 74,000 of the world's most wanted fugitives, with the suspect's name, picture, fingerprints, details of the alleged crime, and the country seeking the arrest. The red notice is not an international arrest warrant. That is also very often misunderstood. How would you describe it? It seems like it's a digital wanted poster. Yes. It's an alert that we are disseminating that somebody is wanted by a member country. Each notice is vetted by a task force Secretary General Stock created

to make sure it doesn't violate rules forbidding the use of Interpol for political, religious, or racial persecution. But the vetting is not foolproof. Some of Interpol's more repressive members take advantage of red notices, using fabricated charges to locate, detain, and extradite people they want to get their hands on, like political dissidents or innocent people who've merely displeased powerful officials. Like any information sharing system, the information that you get out is only as good as the information that you put in. Rhys Davies on the left and Ben

Keith are barristers, British lawyers, who help people accused of crimes to navigate Interpol's complex bureaucracy. Our clients come to us and say, we've been accused in a particular state of a criminal offense which has been fabricated for political reasons, and Interpol's just taken this at face value, issued a red notice. Both concede Interpol does a lot of good, despite a yearly budget of $170 million, which is about the size of the Omaha Police Department.

Their constitution says that they are meant to believe their member states. And so when a member state, Russia, China, Turkey, whose rule of law is often non-existent, say to them a particular person is wanted for a criminal offense, they are bound by the Constitution to believe them. Does Interpol view all the information that comes out of all of them as equal? This is one of our main frustrations, is that Interpol don't penalize countries properly. They want everyone in their club. They want everyone in their club.

When a country is clearly egregiously breaching the rules and manipulating the system on a gross scale, they don't suspend them. They've not suspended Russia. So Russia is still an active member of Interpol. Russia accounts for nearly half of the red notices Interpol makes public. According to a Russian police official, its Interpol bureau in Moscow helped arrest and extradite more than 100 criminals in 2021, and in 2022 helped nab the founder of the world's largest darknet criminal marketplace called Hydra. But some of the information Russia gives Interpol is suspect. Members of Congress, human rights groups, and the European Union have labeled Russia a serial abuser of red notices.

So Russia is widely viewed as being fairly brazen in its attempt to manipulate the system. The famous example that we often talk about is Bill Browder. Bill Browder is a London-based, American-born financier. He made his fortune in Russia, but has spent the last 11 years on the run from President Vladimir Putin, after he and his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, exposed corruption by Russian government officials. Moscow prison. Browder was convicted in absentia on suspect fraud charges. The Kremlin turned to Interpol to bring him in. So how many times by your count has Russia tried to arrest you by way of Interpol? Eight times. I must hold the Guinness Book of World Records for the number of times they've tried to abuse Interpol. His closest call came in 2018 when he was visiting Spain. I opened the door of the hotel and outside the door, just about to knock, is the manager

of the hotel and two uniformed officers from the Spanish police. I pull out my passport. I hand it to one of the two police officers. And he said, you're under arrest. And I said, what for? And he said, Interpol, Russia. The hotel manager told him to collect his things from the bedroom. Once out of sight, Browder grabbed his phone and sent out this tweet.

At the time, I had about 100,000 followers, and I tweeted out, urgent, being arrested in Madrid, Spain right now. That was quick thinking. This is not the first time I had this worry. They've been chasing me with Interpol for a long time. And so I'm sitting in the back of the police car and because they hadn't taken away my phone, I took a picture of the back of their heads. He sent this picture in a second urgent tweet, in the back of the Spanish police car going to the station on the Russian arrest warrant. What were you hoping to accomplish?

I'm hoping to wake the whole world up to the fact that I'm being arrested. I didn't want to be slipped into the back of a, you know, Russian jet and sent off without anyone knowing where I was. What did you think was happening or was going to happen? If I was sent to Russia, I would be killed, no question about it. While Browder stayed locked in a holding cell, his tweets went around the world. The chief of police comes back with a translator and says, we've just gotten off the phone with Interpol general secretary in Lyon. The warrant is no longer valid. You're free to go.

Wow. As a result of your tweets? As a result of the tweets. Are you fearful that this could happen again? Every time I cross the border, my heart starts beating a little bit faster. We asked Juergen Stock why, after all this, Russia hasn't been suspended from Interpol,

especially considering the UN is investigating Russia for war crimes in Ukraine. I'm just trying to understand how a country that is being investigated for mass murder can be a member in good standing with Interpol. Interpol introduced some measures when the conflict started to avoid any political abuse of our systems. But we also decided to keep, let's say, the channels of information open. Russia is hardly the only country to use Interpol to do its dirty work. Bahrain, for example, used Interpol to nab a professional soccer player, an outspoken critic of the government, at the

Bangkok airport in 2018. He spent two and a half months in a Thai prison. China used a red notice to arrest this Chinese Uyghur activist in Morocco in 2021. He remains in prison awaiting extradition. And Qatar issued a red notice for this Scottish engineer in 2022 over a disputed $5,000 bank loan. He spent two months in an Iraqi prison. All of these red notices were eventually rescinded, but not before lives were upended. I don't know how to characterize the people who get caught up in this. Are they collateral damage? No, I would never call that

collateral damage. And we are investing all we can to ensure that every piece of information in our databases are compliant with our rules and regulations. But you know, and we have heard, of incidents where people are languishing in jail because of erroneous information that was sent out by Interpol. I'm not saying that the system is perfect. We see wrong decisions on a national level, and we have seen wrong decisions also in Interpol. That is correct, a small number of cases. Interpol admits in 2022, 304 of nearly 24,000 wanted person alerts were found to violate its rules and were eventually denied or deleted. The organization declined to share which countries were the worst offenders.

There are well-documented cases against Russia, China, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, for repeatedly abusing the Interpol notices. Why not name and shame these countries? Because we believe this is not in the interest of international police cooperation. You need to have a platform where information is being collected from different parts of the world where criminal groups are operating. We want to provide a channel even between states that have diplomatic difficulties or even are in conflict. Our decision is not to police a member country

in terms of their human rights agenda. That's not our role as a technical police organization. That's not justice, though. It's not justice. We get it right most of the time. British barristers Rhys Davies and Ben Keith say if Interpol is to survive another 100 years, it must learn to police itself. We're concerned about the rule of law and human rights,

and Interpol are concerned about trying to catch people who are allegedly criminals. A load of innocent people get caught up in the middle. It feels a bit like that's the sort of price they're prepared to pay for catching the bad guys. And we think that the price that is paid is far too high. And low before the flood, the Lord said to Noah, Make yourself an ark, bring out every kind of living creature. That was the Old Testament.

But what happens today when disaster threatens animals? A powerful force, a zoo, a foreign government, even the U.S. Department of Justice, often calls from on high and enlists the services of one man, Pat Craig, founder of the Wild Animal Sanctuary in Colorado, who's emerged as the go-to guy for orchestrating high-stakes rescues around the world. Last spring, we accompanied this modern-day NOAA to a zoo in Puerto Rico for his most ambitious mission yet. These lions were once literally the pride of Puerto Rico, housed at the Dr. Juane Rivera Zoo in the coastal town of Mayaguez, the only zoo on the island.

But after years of decline, mismanagement, and neglect, this was the tableau that greeted Pat Craig and his wife Monica when they arrived here from Colorado. What was your impression when you got to the zoo for the first time? The animals were very, very sad-looking, and some of them were very, very sick. I felt physically and emotionally overwhelmed. And even while we were there, animals died almost on a weekly basis.

Correct. So that felt even worse because we're present and yet we were there too late. Over the course of a decade, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cited the zoo two dozen times for substandard conditions and animal mistreatment. After Hurricanes Irma and Maria ravaged the island, the zoo closed to the public in 2018. For the more than 300 winged, scaled, and four-legged residents still captive, the situation turned from bad to downright desperate. We saw a zebra that had a horrible wound on her leg and her tail, and she couldn't stand up.

We saw a pig that had a skin condition. Her skin was just falling apart. A mountain lion's untreated cancer had been allowed to spread all over its body. Seeing the mountain lion suffering the way that he was, that broke my heart and not being able to help him. It was just so evident that this facility was way

beyond repair. The U.S. Department of Justice, which enforces federal animal welfare laws in the states and Puerto Rico, agreed. And in February staged an extraordinary intervention, sending a battalion of agents to the zoo to evacuate every single species to permanent homes on the mainland.

To lead this mission, to captain this ark as it were, the DOJ tapped wild animal sanctuary founder Pat Craig. We were there in April to witness the operation. OJ tapped wild animal sanctuary founder Pat Craig. We were there in April to witness the operation. Equal parts military-style logistics and battlefield extraction. Among the targets, seven lions sweltering in a concrete bunker. And they never hooked up the power after the hurricane, and they never hooked up the power to the zoo.

Never. Wait, wait, there's a zoo that's functioning with animals there, and there's no power? There's no power. And then if you look at the pictures from the inside of their building, you know, it's the old steel bars, just like jail cells, all in a row. When it came time to coax the cats out of their cages, Craig entered the lion's den. The gather of the lions weren't necessarily happy to see you and go with you. What happened? They're definitely defensive because they don't know who we are and what we're necessarily happy to see you and go with you. What happened?

They're definitely defensive because they don't know who we are and what we're doing and why. And so we show up and we're like, believe me, you've got to trust me. We're trying to help you here. The sweet-talking didn't work. So they deployed plan B, sedation. Hard to watch, but accepted practice when rescuing uncooperative carnivores. Over the course of five months, Craig and his team of 20 used patience, prodding, pursuit, and grape jelly to lure each animal into its custom-built crate.

A camel. A kangaroo. A rhinoceros. These stubborn hippos. Monica Craig, a native Spanish speaker, had hoped to coordinate with the local staff. But the team from Colorado mostly had to go it alone. She says the zookeepers in Puerto Rico often refuse to help. We tried many, many days to communicate with them and trying to tell them, hey, we're not bad people. We're just trying to do what we're supposed to be doing for these animals and give them a better home.

What was the response to that? They were upset. They were like, no, I don't think that's right. The animals belong here. It was a sentiment shared by many in the community, and at times resistance curdled into outright sabotage. The animals belong here. It was a sentiment shared by many in the community, and at times resistance curdled into outright sabotage. The rescue team had nearly wrangled Mundi, once a star attraction,

into her transport crate, when suddenly... Out of nowhere, this elephant just flies up, tears out of there, starts running around. What do you think happened? Well, I think somebody shot her with a BB gun, if you ask me. And hit her in the rear end. Hit her in the rear end just to make her hate that crate. Yeah. Now she thinks that crate did something to her. We reached out to Puerto Rico's Department of Natural and Environmental Resources,

which is responsible for the zoo. In a statement, it said the animals were provided with comprehensive care and denied there was any neglect, blaming problems at the zoo on hurricane damage, limited resources, and aging animals. Once the transport was finally ready, a police escort to the airport. Then the animals were loaded, one by one, onto charter flights bound for new homes Craig had arranged at sanctuaries across the U.S. How do you ferry to safety an 8,000-pound elephant like Mundi?

On a 747 cargo jet, of course. Departure brought a sigh of relief. When she took off, I cried because I said, Thank you, God. She's in. It's over. She's out of here. There's no question about it anymore. Pat and Monica Craig took as many of the rescues as they could back to their 1,200-acre facility. A vast menagerie roams the grassy enclosures on the high plains of eastern Colorado. Each of the 700-plus animals here came with a sad backstory, wagging their own tales of woe, as it were.

Tigers kept in garages as pets. Lions saved from a zoo in war-torn Ukraine. Bears abused at a Korean medical facility. Now 64, Craig got the idea for the place as a teenager in the 1970s, when a friend who worked at a zoo gave him a tour behind the scenes. There were all these animals, lions and tigers, that were in small cages, and he said, these will be euthanized. And I thought, wow, this is crazy, you know. These are healthy, they're not old, they're not sick. Craig decided right then and there to open his own sanctuary on his parents' small Colorado farm. With few regulations to guide him, he built the animal enclosures himself

and scoured biology books for pointers. Did you have any experience with lions and tigers? No, none. Did you have a degree in zoology? No, I was just starting college back then. It was going to be a business degree. And he quickly learned that lions and tigers are no house cats. In the early years, I was in the hospital more times than you could count. It was like, okay, don't do that again. And, you know, it's just so all those years of making mistakes and not getting killed. What specifically does a mistake look like? Pretty bad. I've had my left arm almost completely torn off.

I've had bit through the chest and collapsed lungs. The animals Craig can handle. But on his missions to hostile environments around the world, it's the people he often needs extra help managing. Heavily armed federal marshals accompanied Craig when the Department of Justice dispatched him to retrieve maltreated big cats that had been kept by the notorious Tiger King, Joe Exotic, the unlikely Netflix sensation, and his associates. These two were among the 141 animals Craig liberated and brought back here.

What kind of conditions was Joe Exotic keeping these guys in in Oklahoma? Well, you know, it was just all these really small cages that were just in line after line because it was a gigantic breeding operation primarily. Let's go. The rescue missions and the sanctuary operate on an annual budget of $34 million. Funding comes mostly from private donations. When animals arrive here, this is often their first stop, designed to minimize shock by mimicking the conditions they came from. Here, they're evaluated and given a treatment plan,

whether it's medication or emergency surgery. conditions they came from. Here, they're evaluated and given a treatment plan, whether it's medication or emergency surgery. Craig and staff veterinarian Dr. Michaela Veters introduced us to Chad and Malawi, both rescued from Puerto Rico. How confident do we feel about our locks here? Confident. This guy wants to get out.

She says, yeah. This guy's ready to hang out with us. They suffer from permanent neurological damage, likely caused by malnutrition, something Craig could spot just by looking. You see how she keeps doing that? Yeah, but really she just doesn't have a control over it. Head tilting at an angle.

Yeah, we've had literally hundreds of lions that have come through that have had that kind of problem. You've seen this before? Oh, yeah. The sanctuary devises a special diet for each animal, which requires 100,000 pounds of food per week, mainly donated by nearby Walmarts, occasional cupcakes included. When we met him, Mikey the bear, another asylum seeker from Puerto Rico, was midway through his rehab. Right now he's in his lockout just so we can medically manage him. What did you see the first time you saw him?

He was in a great deal of pain, very gingerly moving. We assume he's got a great deal of arthritis, which we've provided medications for, and now he's getting around almost like a young bear. Nursing animals like Mikey back to physical health is one thing. Ministering to their emotional wounds is often a bigger challenge. Having been raised in captivity, many of the animals arrive with what amounts to severe PTSD. And they must be taught to trust the humans caring for them. They're already mad at people anyway

because of whatever people had done. I had one tiger years ago that any time you came near, he'd want to hit the fence and kill you. What's the timetable for trying to ease some of the trauma these animals have been through? You know some were beaten, some were starved, some were mentally tormented to a degree you know and so every case is different. So some of them will do it in a matter of days, some will be in a few weeks. Doesn't that story imply however traumatic this may have, it's not irreversible. It's not irreversible. The goal of all this rehab is to get these wild animals to act the part.

Remember Mundi? At the zoo, she had zero contact with other elephants for more than 30 years. We accompanied Craig on a visit to a refuge in Georgia, where he placed Mundi under the care of conservationist Carol Buckley. This marked the first time Craig and the elephant had seen each other since Puerto Rico. What do you notice? Well, first thing, she just looks so much healthier and just her demeanor is so much calmer and nicer. Every day when I would go see her in the zoo, I just, god, I would just hurt. And then now to see this is just amazing. Just truly amazing.

Hey, pretty lady. Buckley provides the care and feeding, but happily admits Mundi's real mentors are the other elephants here. You're just the innkeeper. You're just the chef. Hey, I just open and close doors and make sure the waters are running, you know. And the other elephant knows

what they need to learn, and they're instructing them. It's fantastic. It is exactly the same as what happens in the wild. That's the same principle Craig employs at his sanctuary. And after two months of rehab, the lions from Puerto Rico were ready to enter their permanent habitat. All right, Robert's going to open the door. We were on hand for the release.

No one quite knew what to expect, not least the lions. You can go, yeah. The first was reticent. But one by one... This must just be literally life-changing. They started to venture out, enclosed for their safety and ours, but otherwise in a vast ocean of green. These guys have been in captivity

their whole lives. This is the first. Yeah, this will be the first time ever that they've been able to either run or live in a big space like this, even have deep grass. Makes you feel good? Yeah, absolutely. This is why we do this. There were a few scuffles, but for Pat Craig, that's exactly what he'd hoped for. Lions acting like, well, lions. The animals come to this sanctuary from all over the world, but in this unlikely setting, here silhouetted by the Rockies in eastern Colorado, they find more than just sanctuary. They finally find a home. Next Sunday on 60 Minutes, as America gears up for the Super Bowl

on February 11th, John Wertheim investigates the growing and often addictive hold online sports betting has on young men. People who aren't familiar might think of the typical gambling addict as the middle-aged guy in a windbreaker who's betting his retirement savings.

It's more prominent in the younger generation, I think, than ever. The sportsbooks and the commercials and the leagues themselves are making it look so cool to gamble and risk your money. And when impetuous 22-year-olds making snap bets go up against gambling corporations armed with databanks, artificial intelligence, and engineering, the result is often a mismatch. I'm Cecilia Vega. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes. At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But, but, we do also like to get into other kinds of stories.

Stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radiolab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcasts.