60 Minutes - 03/16/2025: Under the Radar, America’s Own, Werner Herzog

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

With news of mysterious drones flying over New Jersey and concerns about spying, this week’s 60 MINUTES investigates a surprising story about another drone incursion. Correspondent Bill Whitaker reports what happened 15 months ago over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, which houses nearly half of the most advanced U.S. stealth fighter jets, the F-22 Raptor, and how it is part of a series of brazen overflights of sensitive military sites. Young dreams were dashed when the U.S. Marine Band followed orders to cancel a concert featuring middle and high school musicians of color, a result of the Trump administration’s executive order ending DEI initiatives. Correspondent Scott Pelley speaks with performers of The Equity Arc Wind Symphony about the importance of supporting all talented, aspiring musicians. The name Werner Herzog may not be as recognizable as Spielberg or Scorsese, but over the last six decades, the German filmmaker has had a profound and far-reaching influence on the world of cinema. He’s made over 70 features and documentaries, which are often dream-like explorations of nature’s power, human frailties and the edges of sanity. Correspondent Anderson Cooper sits down with the enigmatic director to discuss his films, and his other roles as writer and actor. 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

We have visual four probable unidentified drones. Tonight, 60 Minutes investigates the mysterious drones that have been spotted flying over some of the most restricted military sites in the United States, including Langley Air Force Base, home to our most advanced fighter jets. Do you believe that these drones are a spying system, a spying platform? What would a logical person conclude? That. The Marine Corps Band judged a national contest for diverse teenage musicians. The prize was a concert, but the performance was canceled after President Trump ended diversity programs.

All the same, tonight you will hear the young musicians in a band that looks like America. In celluloid, we trust. In all of Herzog's feature films and documentaries, you'll find remarkable moments, nightmarish ones as well. His curiosity has taken him to the remotest regions of our planet, an apocalyptic oil fires in Kuwait after the first Gulf War. You have to have a certain amount of good criminal energy. To make a film.

Sometimes, yes. You have to go outside of what the norm is. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cec 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. From commutes that become learning sessions to dishwashing filled with laughs podcasts can help you make the most out of your everyday and when it comes to everyday spending you can count on the pc insiders world elite mastercard to help you earn the most pc optimum points everywhere you shop the pc insiders world elite mastercard the card for living unlimited conditions apply to all benefits visit pcfinancial.ca for details. 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. Last month, the head of NORAD and NORTHCOM, the military commands that defend

North America, told Congress some of those mysterious drones seen flying inside the United States may indeed have been spying. He did not say for whom. 60 Minutes has been looking into a series of eerily similar incidents going back years, including those attention-getting flyovers in New Jersey recently. In each, drones first appeared over restricted military or civilian sites, coming and going often literally under the radar. The wake-up call came just over a year ago, when drones invaded the skies above Langley Air Force Base in Virginia over 17 nights, forcing the relocation of our most advanced

fighter jets. Our story starts with an eyewitness and an iPhone. Close around 7 o'clock, I would say, I started seeing these reddish-orange flashing lights that were starting to come in from the Virginia Beach area. It began slowly, like one at a time. Jonathan Butner's close encounter with drones came on December 14, 2023.

He was at his family's cabin on the James River in Virginia, about 100 miles south of Washington, D.C., with a commanding view of several military installations across the water. They started really coming in, like, almost like on a conveyor belt. How many in total? I probably saw upwards of 40 plus. When I first saw that, I was like, those are going directly over Langley Air Force Base. Langley is one of the most critical air bases on the East Coast. Home to dozens of F-22 Raptors,

the most advanced stealth fighter jets ever built. Butner says from his perch, he has seen it all. I'm very familiar with all the different types of military craft. We have Blackhawks, we have the F-22s, and these were like nothing I've ever seen. Butner took these iPhone videos of the objects coming and going for nearly an hour and a half. These are the only public videos of the drones over Langley.

Here's another one. Yes. He shared this video with the FBI for its investigation. And another. Yes. The reports were coming in 20 to 30 sightings, same time every evening, 30 to 45 minutes after sunset. Retired four-star general Mark Kelly was the highest-ranking officer at Langley to witness the swarm. A veteran fighter pilot, Kelly went up to the roof of a squadron headquarters for an unobstructed view of the airborne invaders. So what'd you see?

Well, what you saw was different sizes of incursions of aircraft. You saw different altitudes, different airspeeds. Some were rather loud. Some weren't near as loud. What was the smallest one? What was the largest one? The smallest, you know, you're talking about a commercial size quadcopter. And then the largest ones are probably size what I would call a bass boat or a small car. The size of a small car. At the time, General Glenn Van Hurk was Joint Commander of NORAD and NORTHCOM, the military commands that protect North American airspace. He has since retired.

I actually provided support in the form of fighters, airborne warning and control platforms, helicopters to try to further categorize what those drones were at the time. Ten months earlier, he ordered an F-22 from Langley to shoot down that Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic after it had sailed across the U.S. But this time, he found himself ill-equipped to respond. NORAD's radar systems, designed during the Cold War to detect high-altitude air, space, or missile attacks, were unable to detect low-flying drones that could be seen with the naked eye. Why don't we just shoot them down? Well, first, you have to have the capability to detect, track, identify, make sure it's not a civilian airplane flying around.

If you can do that, Bill, then it becomes a safety issue for the American public. Firing missiles in our homeland is not taken lightly. We're not able to track them? We're not able to see where they originate? No, it's a capability gap. Certainly they can come and go from any direction. The FBI is looking at potential options, but they don't have an answer right now. And there haven't been answers for similar encroachments for more than five years. There are multiple UAS in vicinity of Paul Hamilton, CPA 100 feet in altitude off the bow. In 2019, naval warships training off the California coast were shadowed for weeks by dozens of drones.

We have visual four probable unidentified drones with course unknown and speed unknown. For years, the Pentagon did little to dispel speculation these images, taken with night vision equipment, were UFOs. But ship's logs show they were identified as drones at the time. And the Navy suspected they came from this Hong Kong-flagged freighter sailing nearby, but couldn't prove it. Since then, the defense news site, The War Zone, has documented dozens of drone intrusions at sensitive infrastructure and military installations. In 2019, the Palo Verde nuclear plant in Arizona, the largest power producer in the country. In 2024, an experimental weapons site in Southern California, where defense contractors are building the next generation of stealth bombers. Last December, the Army confirmed 11 drone sightings

over the Picatinny Arsenal in northern New Jersey where advanced weapons are designed and built. What is that? Which ignited a public frenzy with sightings of unidentified flying objects all over the region. New Jersey remains the epicenter of the drone mystery. While much of the country was fixated on New Jersey, another swarm of drones was disrupting operations at an airbase in the U.K., where U.S. nuclear weapons have been stored.

Clearly, there is a military intelligence aspect of this. Republican Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi is chairman of the Armed Services Committee that oversees the Pentagon. We talked to him this past December. Do you believe that these drones are a spying system, a spying platform? What would a logical person conclude? That. That these are spying incursions.

And yet, I can tell you, I am privy to classified briefings at the highest level. I think the Pentagon and the National Security Advisors are still mystified. Still mystified? Yes. More alarming? With drones overhead, some of the F-22s stationed at Langley were moved to a nearby airbase for their own protection. There's a new wartime reality. Drones that can spy can also destroy. Deep inside Russia, advanced aircraft have been destroyed by Ukrainian drones. General Van Herk told us drones could do the same thing here. I have seen video of drones in various sizes flying over the F-22 flight line at Langley.

What's your reaction to that? They could drop ordnance on them, drop bombs on them. They could crash into them to disable them. Was that a concern? Absolutely, it's a concern. Small UAS or drones can do a myriad of missions. President Biden was informed of the Langley intrusions, and meetings were held at the White House to figure out how to bring the drones down.

But after 17 nights, the drone visitation stopped. A senior official in the Biden White House later downplayed the incident to 60 Minutes, saying it was likely the work of hobbyists. From what you saw, did you rule out that these might be hobbyists sending these drones up? No, it would be my assessment they weren't hobbyists because of the magnitude of the events, the sizes of some of the drones, and the duration. So what's going on? Well, I wish I had the answer. It certainly could have a foreign nexus, a threat nexus. They could be doing anything from surveilling critical infrastructure, just to the point of embarrassing us from the fact that they can do this on a day-to-day basis,

and then we're not able to do anything about it. In overseas war zones, the U.S. military has broad authority to bring down menacing drones with gunfire, missiles, and electronic jamming. Here at home, any of those actions would pose a threat to civilians on the ground and in the air. Well, we certainly need new systems to counter this threat. A year ago, General Gregory Guillaume, a combat veteran, took control of NORAD and NORTHCOM. He ordered a 90-day assessment of operations and says the drones or UAVs at Langley became the centerpiece. We're the most powerful military on the face of the earth, and yet drones could fly over a major Air Force base and we couldn't stop them? How is that possible? Well, I think the threat got ahead of our ability

to detect and track the threat. I think all eyes were rightfully overseas, where UAVs were being used on one-way attack to attack US and coalition service members. And the threat in the US probably caught us by surprise a little bit. As it stands today, could you detect a swarm of drones flying over or flying into the airspace at Langley? Could you detect that today?

At low altitude, probably not with your standard FAA or surveillance radars. Complicating his efforts? Bureaucracy. When the drones flew outside the perimeter of Langley Air Force Base, other agencies had jurisdiction. The Coast Guard, FAA, FBI, and local police. There was no one agency in charge. So what did you determine went on at Langley?

Well, that investigation is still ongoing, so I don't think we know entirely what happened. You know, when we hear things from the White House that it's not deemed a threat, it seems to me that this is alarming. I mean, this is kind of hair on fire time. It is alarming, and I would say that our hair is on fire here in North Com in a controlled way and we're moving out extremely quickly. This past November, General Guillaume was given the authority to cut through the red tape and coordinate counter drone efforts across multiple government agencies. He says new, more sensitive radar systems are being installed at strategic bases, and NORTHCOM is developing what it calls flyaway kits with the

latest anti-drone technology to be delivered to bases besieged by drones. My goal is inside of a year that we would have the flyaway capability to augment the services and the installations if they're necessary. So within a year, were Langley to happen again, there'd be some ability to respond? That's my goal. His predecessor, Glenn Van Hurk, says the Pentagon, White House, and Congress have underestimated this massive vulnerability for far too long.

It's been one year since Langley had their drone incursion, and we don't have the policies and laws in place to deal with this. That's not a sense of urgency. Why do you think that is? I think it's because there's a perception that this is Fortress America, two oceans on the east and west with friendly nations north and south, and nobody's going to attack

our homeland. It's time we move beyond that assumption. 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. The United States Marine Band was founded in 1798. Thomas Jefferson gave it its nickname, The President's Own. Today, 135 Marines still perform the score of the White House from parties to inaugurations. So there was excitement last year when the Marines judged a contest for teenage musicians. The winners would perform with the band. 30 students were chosen. The concert was scheduled. But last month, it was canceled. President Trump had issued his executive order against diversity programs, and the young

musicians were Black, Hispanic, Indian, and Asian. Because they were silenced, many wanted to hear them, including veterans of military bands who gathered in an improvised orchestra of equity that you might call America's own. near Washington, 22 students who had lost their chance to play tuned up with the military band veterans for the canceled concert, Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, by John Philip Sousa. Sousa directed the marine band a century and a half ago and composed Stars and Stripes Forever, the great classic in the songbook of patriots. We're a land that prides itself on being the land of the free, the home of the brave. And I believe that just as much as anyone else does. But for that, we need these different perspectives. We need

to see how others think. 18-year-old Rishabh Jain was among the students barred from playing with the Marines. He was born in America to Indian parents, a high school senior accepted at Harvard. If we are a society that's suppressing art, we're a society that is afraid of what it might reveal about itself. If we're suppressing music, we're suppressing emotions, we're suppressing expression, we're suppressing vulnerability, we're suppressing the very essence of what makes us human. We are devaluing our own humanity. We are degrading our own humanity.

You don't seem to believe in limitations. Absolutely not. There were no limitations but talent last year when Rishabh Jain and about 60 others nationwide posted auditions for the Marines to judge. Zakiya McClinney uploaded her clarinet from Pennsylvania. Did you think you were going to be chosen? Yes.

You have a lot of confidence. I do. Why did you think you were going to be chosen? I live my life with a lot of confidence. She was right. Zakiya was chosen. She and all the contestants had been organized by a Chicago-based non-profit called Equity Arc, which connects student musicians of color with mentors and opportunities. And here's why. American orchestras today are 80% white, 11% Asian, 5% Hispanic, and 2% Black.

No wonder that in 2022, Equity Arc's executive director got an unexpected call. The Marines called you? Yes. They called Stanford Thompson to ask how the band could reach out to musicians of color. It's part of the band's mission to educate youth. So in that phone call with the Marine band, I, you know, I shared with them a lot of ideas, a lot that we have learned as an organization. And when I got off the phone, it was just, it was crazy.

It was like, wait, let me call this guy back because I should be offering away some ideas that Equity Arc and the Marine Band could work together. We identified this high school age, this pre-college age, where a lot of musicians of color drop off. We came up with the idea of, can we bring a select group that we would audition through a competitive process to Washington to be able to spend a couple of days with the band.

The couple of days were supposed to look like this. Top music students, like Zakiya McClinney, learning from the best. And woodwinds just a little bit more sound. Their wind symphony was set for this May 4th until President Trump's executive order banning programs for diversity. We've ended the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion policies all across the entire federal government and indeed the private sector and our military. And our country will be woke no longer. The president says he is building a colorblind, merit-based society,

a reaction to what many saw as progressive politics gone too far. His order was comprehensive, calling diversity programs illegal and immoral discrimination and an immense public waste. But that executive order is just the beginning. All across the government, President Trump is rolling back 60 years of discrimination protections for women, older Americans, the disabled, and people of color. Trump rescinded President Johnson's 1965 ban on employment bias. He closed the Social Security Office of Civil Rights and fired leaders of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC,

which investigates bias in the workplace. I think we're at a pivotal moment in our society, and we have to make a decision as to which way do we want to go. Carrie Dominguez chaired the EEOC for George W. Bush. Her family fled Cuba when she was 12. The argument behind the executive order is that America has eliminated racism, that no one in this country is held back by race any longer.

The data would not support that. The data, Dominguez told us, shows that the EEOC handles around 100,000 discrimination claims from Americans each year. The executive order calls the kinds of programs that you used to enforce, quote, immoral. I believe what is immoral is to deny people opportunities. I have witnessed individuals who have beautiful resumes and they get an interview, they come in using a wheelchair, and all of a sudden the opportunity is gone. Denying people opportunities, because of that, lack of fairness is immoral.

That's the immoral part. Fairness aside, in this email, the Marine Band's commanding officer wrote, Equity Arc Stan Thompson, as long as the executive order is in place, we will not be able to reschedule. I am really sorry to be the bearer of this news. My first thought was hopelessness in a way and heartbreak. Did you have the sense that the concert was canceled because of the color of your skin? Absolutely. I mean, I couldn't think of another reason, really.

I had prepared. I had done everything I could to be at the top. And being Indian, I thought, yeah, what other reason would there be? Any questions were answered this past week. The students gathered in Washington for rehearsals and the performance. 60 Minutes did what we often do, covered costs of plane hall and try to replace the absent Marine band, which turned out to be easy. I just felt like, well, there's usually two responses to something.

You could complain about it, or you could do something about it. I chose the latter within seconds, and it was the easiest decision ever. Easy for John Abraciiaminto and Jennifer Morata, retired Marine Band trumpeters. Marines follow orders. Yeah. They don't have to like them. Right. What do you think the members of the band think of all of this?

I know them. I like the back of my hand. So I don't think it's too much for me to go out and lend them to say how disappointed they were. With the active duty Marines ordered to stand down, Equity Arc reached out to retirees who answered the call from everywhere. Former band members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, West Point, the Naval Academy, and the Marines. Jennifer Marotta flew on her dime from LA. When I got that email, I looked at my schedule and I said I can move all of those things. I booked a flight. It was literally one week ago and I'm here. I challenge anyone, literally anyone, to come to me and say,

by having this concert does damage to the United States. It doesn't. It brings out the best of us. You were not meant to be here today. This ensemble was not meant to be heard. And I wonder what this moment on this stage means to your heart. My name is Sean Mouzan. I'm here from Atlanta, Georgia.

I'm a junior at Southwest DeKalb High School. One thing that unites us all is this music. I'm here because I love it. No other reason than all these amazing, talented people. And I don't want this to be taken away from anybody because of someone else's personal opinion or just anything else besides why we like to do this. My name is Vanessa Cabrera. I'm from Rockaway, New Jersey.

We worked hard to be here. We belong here. We have the talent to be here and this is not just for us but for children and just people in the same situation that we are, that nobody can tell you what to do. You know, if you put your mind to something that you can accomplish that. My name is Ricardo Lazaro. I'm from San Antonio, Texas. I just want the world to be a better place, but it seems like we're slowly straying away from that. And we got to make a change. And I believe everyone here is capable of doing that but are we going to do it? Hi my name is Julie Angeles Bowler. I retired

after 23 years as the timpanist of the U.S. Army band Pershing's Own. We need all of this not just musically, athletically, academically. we need diversity, equity, and inclusion. Thank you very much. The original Marine Band concert would have been seen by hundreds. Here tonight, these musicians are being heard by millions. At the podium, Rodney Dorsey of Florida State University conducting Gallop by Dmitry Shostakovich in the hands of a band that looks like America. Werner Herzog may not be a household name, but he is one of the most respected and unusual filmmakers of our time. Over the last six decades, the German director has made more than 70 documentaries and feature films about everything from an unhinged cop in

New Orleans to a guy who thought he could live with grizzly bears. He did until they ate him. Werner Herzog has never shied away from the extreme. If anything, he's drawn to it. His movies are often dreamlike explorations of the power of nature, the frailties of man, and the edges of sanity. At 82, he's still working constantly, still making movies no one else would or could ever dream of. This was the film that introduced Werner Herzog to the world in 1972, Aguirre, The Wrath of God,

about a group of conquistadors searching for a lost city of gold in the Amazon and the wrath, who gradually descend into madness. The wrath of God. Shot on a shoestring budget in Peru, it only got finished because of Herzog's force of will and determination. I read that you sold your shoes in order to get some fish to feed the crew. Well, it's not normally what a director has to do.

It's good to have some good boots, and you can barter it for a load of fish on my wristwatch. I would give away, I would give away. I would give away everything. And it's worth it? Of course. Of course it's worth it. I get away with the loot.

I have a film. That's the loot, though. You're not talking about making millions and millions of dollars. The loot for you is the film. Yeah. And of course, I make money sometimes, and I invest it in the the film. Yeah. And of course, I make money sometimes and I invest it in the next film.

If you've seen any of Herzog's documentaries, it may be Grizzly Man, one of his most commercially successful. It tells the strange tale of Timothy Treadwell, an eccentric drifter

who spent 13 summers in the wilds of Alaska recording himself interacting with grizzly bears. If I show weakness, I may be hurt, I may be killed. Treadwell seemed convinced he had a spiritual connection with the grizzlies and was somehow their protector. In the end, he's the one who needed protecting. Go back and play.

We sat down with Herzog to watch the film and others at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures David Geffen Theater in Los Angeles. And what haunts me is that in all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed, I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. You have a distinctly unromantic view of nature. Yes. Nature is utterly indifferent. We are not made to become brothers with the bears. That happens in Walt Disney, not in real life. Take a step to the left. Okay.

In all of Herzog's feature films and documentaries, you'll find remarkable moments, nightmarish ones as well. His curiosity has taken him to the remotest regions of our planet. In celluloid, we trust. With his distinctly Teutonic tone, he narrates his documentaries himself and asks questions that rarely have easy answers. Do fish have souls? Do fish have souls?

Do fish have dreams? Herzog has revealed hidden landscapes under the Antarctic ice sheet and apocalyptic oil fires in Kuwait after the first Gulf War. Has life without fire become unbearable for them? He's risked his life to capture the power of volcanoes and filmed ancient cave paintings in France rarely seen before. Here, hold it, hold it, hold it. Herzog is now working on a new documentary in Los Angeles with his editor, Marco Capaldo. rarely seen before. Yeah, hold it, hold it, hold it.

Herzog is now working on a new documentary in Los Angeles with his editor Marco Capaldo. And now music. Wow. Schubert's not to have. It's a movie about the search for a legendary herd of elephants in southern Africa. But Herzog insists it's not a wildlife film.

It's a fantasy of elephants, maybe a search like for the white whale from Moby Dick. It's a dream of an elephant. Herzog never had any formal training as a director. He was born in Munich just two weeks before the Allies bombed it in 1942. His father was away serving in the German army when his mother fled with Werner and his older brother to the mountains of Bavaria. We grew up in complete poverty and we had no running water, no sewage system, hardly ever electricity. We had one loaf of bread per, and we were hanging it at her skirt, wailing that we were hungry, and she spins around and she looks at us and she says,

boys, if I could cut it out of my ribs, I would cut it out of my ribs, but I can't. To this day, that experience shapes you. Yes, it does. Follow me! Herzog didn't see his first film until he was 11. He got hooked on American B-movies like Zorro and decided filmmaking was his destiny. He just needed a camera. He finally found one in a film school in Munich. One day I saw this camera room and nobody was in there and I took one and tested it, walked out,

and they never noticed that a camera was missing. I mean, that's a stolen camera. It was more expropriation than theft. You have to have a certain amount of, I say, good criminal energy. To make a film. Sometimes, yes, you have to. You have to go outside

of what the norm is. He's been going outside the norm his whole life. In 1979, he began working on a fever dream of a film called Fitzcarraldo. It took him three grueling years to make. German actor Klaus Kinski plays

an obsessed Irishman who'll stop at nothing to build an opera house in the Amazon. I want my home for the whole world! Give it a go! To raise the money for it, Fitzcarraldo hatches a plan to harvest lucrative rubber trees in a remote jungle and hires indigenous laborers to haul a ship over a mountain to do it. Herzog refused to cut corners. He insisted on buying a 340-ton steamship and actually moving it up a mountain. Couldn't you have used special effects with a model of a ship being moved over a mountain rather than actually moving an enormous... Yes, it was a discussion with 20th Century Fox.

And they said we could shoot it in the Botanic Garden in San Diego. And we could move a tiny miniature boat. And I said, no, we are not speaking the same language. It certainly would have been easier. No, it would have been a lousy film. That was the least of it. A border war forced Herzog to move the production a thousand miles away to a new location.

There were money problems, plane crashes, fighting between local indigenous groups, and constant battles against the rain and mud. Herzog's relentless pursuit of his vision took a toll on the cast and crew and on him as well. Documentary filmmakers shot the chaos behind the scenes and turned it into a movie all its own called Burden of Dreams.

It's just been re-released in theaters. We are challenging nature itself, and it hits back. It just hits back, that's all. And that's grandiose about it and we have to accept that it is much stronger than we are. Of course there's a lot of misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery and the birds are in misery. I don't think they sing. They just screech in pain. Did you feel that every day? Every day, every night, and the next day, and the next night, and on.

Herzog also had to deal with Klaus Kinski, the star of the film, who was prone to explosions of rage. I had a madman as a leading character. with Klaus Kinski, the star of the film who was prone to explosions of rage. I had a madman as a leading character. He had a temper. As demented as it gets, you had to contain him. And I made his madness, his explosive destructiveness, productive for the screen. How do you do that? Every gray hair on my head I call Kinski.

Kinski appeared in five of Herzog's films and died in 1991, but not before putting his own thoughts about Herzog down on paper. This is what Klaus Kinski said of you in his autobiography. I've never in my life met anybody so dull, humorless, uptight, and swaggering. Herzog is a miserable, hateful, malevolent, avaricious, money-hungry, nasty, sadistic, treacherous, cowardly creep. Yes, it's beautiful stuff. I actually helped him. You helped him write this?

With a dictionary, yeah, with Rougis' thesaurus. When Fitzcarraldo was finally released in 1982, Herzog won the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival. You must have been deluded to make this, or crazy in some way. No, no, no. But the fact is, when you look at the film industry, there's so much craziness around, so much illusion, so much dementia, so much ego. And when I look at this, I know I'm the only one who is clinically sane.

This shows you're the only one who's sane? It shows it, yes, yes. That's my proof. Notebooks. Herzog still has the journals he wrote while making Fitzcarraldo. Over the months, as the pressure on him grew, his writing became barely readable. But it becomes microscopic almost. He turned those journals into a book called The Conquest of the Useless. He's published 11 others as well, fiction, poetry, and memoirs. I've always maintained since more than four decades

that my writing, my prose and my poetry will outlive my films. You think your writing will outlive your films? Yes, I'm totally convinced of that. Herzog doesn't just work behind the camera. Every now and then, he acts. That's him in the Star Wars series The Mandalorian. Please lower your blaster. You would do well to remember that life is heartless.

He's also lent his distinctive voice to several characters on The Simpsons. I'd say goodbye, but what's the point? I have to know when I'm keeping away from them. Last September, we joined Herzog as he taught aspiring filmmakers on the Spanish island of La Palma off the west coast of Africa. It's covered in volcanic rock and ash from an eruption three years ago. A Herzogian landscape, if ever there was one. You want to leave him and he looks in this direction, you just pan away.

It's an 11-day workshop. Less about the fundamentals of filmmaking and more about poetic vision and grit. It's his fantasies, it's his ghosts that he's searching. He calls it a film school for rogues. And for the rogues, I also say, you are able-bodied, earn money to finance your first films, but don't earn it with clerical works in an office. Go out and work as a bouncer in a sex club, work as a warden in a lunatic asylum, go out to a cattle ranch and learn how to milk a cow. Earn your money that way in real life. You do not become a poet by being in a college.

And I teach them a few things like foraging, a shooting permit, can I have you see? It should look really authentic. How to fake a shooting permit. The shooting permit during a dictatorship. Have you made those? Yes, of course, And I teach lock picking. You have to know.

Yes, you have to be good at that. To make a film, you have to know how to forge a permit and pick a lock. And you better carry bolt cutters everywhere. It's not for the faint-hearted. Now, the last minute of 60 Minutes. Now, an update on a story we reported on last season about how the Social Security administration recovers money from people it has mistakenly overpaid. Are you scared?

He's thinking we're going to lose our house. You know, what are we going to do? I mean, we're very scared. After our story, Social Security announced it would claw back no more than 10 percent of a person's monthly check to recover an overpayment. But earlier this month, under President Trump, the agency reversed course, saying it will be withholding 100 percent of monthly checks to recover most new overpayments and fines. People who depend on Social Security to survive can contact the agency, but recently announced staff cuts and office closures could make it harder to get help. I'm Anderson Cooper. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.