60 Minutes - 03/31/2024: Targeting Americans and Indian Relay

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

In the fourth installment of a five-year investigation into potential attacks on American government officials and a condition, known as Havana Syndrome, correspondent Scott Pelley reports on the intriguing case of an FBI official who says she was targeted inside the U.S., and on new information about the Pentagon's global investigation into these mysterious incidents. For the first time, sources tell 60 Minutes they have evidence that a U.S. adversary may be involved. Bill Whitaker reports from the chaotic and high-speed racetrack of “America’s original extreme sport” - Indian Relay. As horse nation tribes unite for an exciting and dangerous bareback horse race, Whitaker looks at how the sport continues to grow and offer new opportunities of pride to the next generation of Native American youth. 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

There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here? And maybe how to head them off at the pass? That's On the Media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts.

A car chase in Florida may have provided the vital clue to a national security mystery. Many U.S. officials and their families believe they've been injured by a secret weapon in the hands of a foreign adversary. It's devastating. It's absolutely devastating. Tonight, for the first time, we have evidence of who might be responsible. Are we being attacked? My personal opinion, yes. By whom? Russia.

Welcome to the 2023 Championship of Champions. In Indian relay, as many as six thoroughbred racehorses are brought to a start line drawn in the dirt. The horses are bareback, no saddles or stirrups. Their riders wear no protective gear. At the sound of a horn, they leap aboard and tear down the track. These horses are able to run like you wouldn't believe. But the hard part comes from jumping off. I'm Leslie 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. There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media.

Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here? And maybe how to head them off at the pass? That's On the Media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts. Tonight, we have important developments in our five-year investigation of mysterious brain injuries reported by U.S. national security officials. The injured include White House staff, CIA officers, FBI agents, military officers, and their families. Many believe that they were wounded by a secret weapon that fires a high-energy beam of microwaves or ultrasound. This is our fourth story, and for the first time we have evidence of who might be responsible. Most of the injured have fought for America,

often in secret, and they're frustrated that the U.S. government publicly doubts that an adversary is targeting Americans. One of them is Carrie. We're disguising her and not using her last name because she's still an FBI agent working in counterintelligence. She says in 2021, she was home in Florida when she was hit by a crippling force. And bam, inside my right ear, it was like a dentist drilling on steroids. That feeling when it gets too close to your eardrum, it's like that, you know, times 10. It was like a high-pitched

metallic drilling noise, and it knocked me forward at like a 45-degree angle this way. She says she was by a window in her laundry room. My right ear was line of sight to that window while this thing was happening in my ear. And when I leaned forward, it kind of knocked, it didn't knock me over, but it knocked me forward. I immediately felt pressure, and pressure and pain started coursing from inside my right ear, down my jaw, down my neck, and into my chest.

At the same time, FBI agent Carrie told us the battery in her phone began to swell until it broke the case. Finally, she passed out on a couch. Because of chest pain, she was checked by a cardiologist and then returned to duty. And I remember complaining to my colleagues for months after that. I felt like I had early Alzheimer's. Short-term memory, long-term memory, confusing memories, multitasking. My baseline changed. I was not the same person. Carrie's story matches those we've uncovered over the years. It was like this piercing feeling on the side of my head.

It was like I remember it was on the right side of my head, and I got like vertigo. Olivia Troy was Homeland Security Advisor to Vice President Mike Pence. In our 2022 report, she told us she was hit outside the White House. And then severe ear pain started. So I liken it to if you put a Q-tip too far and you bounce off your eardrum. Well, imagine taking a sharp pencil and just kind of poke in that. And this man told us he was among the first publicly known cases in 2016 from our embassy in Cuba. That's how the incidents became known as Havana Syndrome. He's medically retired from an agency we can't name, blind in one eye and struggling for balance. A major medical study for the government was led by Dr. David Railman of Stanford University.

In our 2022 report, he told us, What we found was, we thought, clear evidence of an injury to the auditory and vestibular system of the brain. Everything starting with the inner ear, where humans perceive sound and sense balance, and then translate those perceptions into brain electrical signals. His study found directed pulsed radiofre frequency energy appears to be the most plausible mechanism. For example, a focused beam of microwaves or acoustic ultrasound. More than 100 officials or family members have unexplained persistent symptoms. If I turn too fast, my gyroscope is off, essentially. It's like a step behind where I'm supposed to be. So I'll turn too fast, and I will literally walk right into the wall or the doorframe.

Now, for the first time, the case of FBI agent Carrie suggests which adversary might be responsible. She spoke with the FBI's permission, but wasn't allowed to discuss the cases she was on when she was hit. We have learned from other sources one of those cases involved this Mustang going 110 miles an hour. In 2020, near Key West, Florida, deputies tried to stop the Mustang for speeding. It ran 15 miles until it hit spike strips laid in its path. A search of the car found notes of bank accounts. City Bank, Discover Savings, 75,000.

And this device that looks like a walkie-talkie can erase the car's computer data, including its GPS record. There was also a Russian passport. What's your first name? Vitaly. V-I-T-A-L-I-I. Vitaly Kovalev was the driver, from St. Petersburg, Russia, not Florida. Why did you run? Let me be honest with you.

I don't know. You don't know why you ran? I don't know. You don't know why you ran? I don't know. And we don't know why he ran. But what we learned suggests he was a Russian spy. What we see here is Vitaly Kovalev fitting exactly this formula. Christo Grozev is a journalist legendary for unmasking Russian plots. In 2020, he uncovered the names of the Russian secret agents who poisoned Vladimir Putin's rival, Alexei Navalny. Grozev is lead investigator for our collaborator

on this story, The Insider, a magazine by Russian exiles. We asked him to trace Vitaly Kovalev. He studied in a military institute. He studied radio electronics with a particular focus on use within the military of microelectronics. He had all the technology know-how that would be required for somebody to be assisting an operation that requires high technology. And then all of a sudden, after working for two years in a military institute, he up and decides to become a chef. Kovalev immigrated to the U.S. and worked as a chef

in New York and Washington, D.C., even appearing at far left in a TV cooking segment. Traditional Russian recipes, thanks to our wonderful chef. But Kovalev was actually a Russian military electrical engineer with a top-secret security clearance. Can someone like Kovalev simply decide to drop all of that and become a chef? It is not an easy job to just leave that behind. Once you're in the military and you've been trained and the Ministry of Defense is invested in you, you remain at their beck and call for the rest of your life.

We don't know what Kovalev was up to, but our sources say over months, he spent 80 hours being interviewed by FBI agent Kerry, who had investigated multiple Russian spies. Kovalev pled guilty to evading police and reckless driving. He was sentenced to 30 months. While he was in jail, Kerry says she was hit in Florida, and a year later when she awoke to the same symptoms in the middle of the night in California. It felt like I was stuck in this state of like disorientation, not able to function, what is happening, and my whole body was pulsing. Mark Zaid is Carrie's

attorney. He has a security clearance and for decades has represented Americans working in national security. Zaid has more than two dozen clients suffering symptoms of Havana syndrome, which the government now calls anomalous health incidents. I have CIA and State Department clients as well who believe they've been impacted domestically. There are dozens of CIA cases that have happened domestically that is at least believed. And we're not even just talking about physical manifestation. We're talking about evidence of computer issues in the midst of the incident, where computer screens just literally stop working or go flicker on and off.

Do you know whether there are other FBI agents who have also suffered from these anomalous health incidents? There are other FBI agents and personnel, not just agents, analysts. I represent one other FBI person who was impacted in Miami. And I also know of FBI personnel who believe they were hit overseas in the last decade. Were any of these members of the FBI counterintelligence people in addition to Kerry? The one thread that I know of with the FBI personnel that is common among most, if not all, of my clients other than the family members connected to the employee was they were all doing something

relating to Russia. Vitaly Kovalev served his time and in 2022 went back to Russia, ignoring American warnings that he was in danger because he'd spent so much time with the FBI. Christo Grozev found this death certificate from last year, which says Kovalev was killed at the front in Ukraine. Do you think Kovalev was sent to Ukraine as a punishment? One theory is that he was sent there in order for him to be disposed of. Is Kovalev really dead, or is this another cover story? That is a very good question, and we actually worked on both hypotheses for a while. I do believe at this point that he was dead.

We're dealing with energy weapons. It's not going anywhere. Look how effective it's been. It's next-generation weaponry, and unfortunately it's been refined on some of us and we're the test subjects. When we come back, you will hear from the Pentagon official who led a global investigation into who is targeting Americans.

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 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. U.S. intelligence says publicly there is no credible evidence that an adversary is inflicting brain injuries on national security officials. And yet, more than 100 Americans have symptoms that scientists say could be caused by a beam of microwaves or acoustic ultrasound. The Pentagon launched an investigation run by a recently retired Army Lieutenant Colonel. Greg Edgreen has never spoken publicly until now. Are we being attacked? My personal opinion, yes.

By whom? Russia. Greg Edgreen ran the investigation for the Defense Intelligence Agency. He would not discuss classified information, but he described his team's work from 2021 to 2023. We were collecting a large body of data ranging from signals intelligence, human intelligence, open source reporting, anything regarding the internet, travel records, financial records, you name it. Unfortunately, I can't get into specifics based on the classification, but I can tell you at a very early stage, I started to focus on Moscow. Can you tell me about the patterns you began to see?

One of the things I started to notice was the caliber of our officer that was being impacted. This wasn't happening to our worst or our middle range officers. This was happening to our top five, 10% performing officers across the Defense Intelligence Agency. And consistently, there was a Russia nexus. There was some angle where they had worked against Russia, focused on Russia, and done extremely well. What has been the impact on American national security? The impact has been that the intelligence officers and our diplomats working abroad are being removed from their posts with traumatic brain injuries. They're being neutralized. Tonight, we're reporting for the first time an incident at last year's NATO summit

in Lithuania, a meeting that focused largely on Russia's invasion of Ukraine and was attended by President Biden. Multiple sources tell us that a senior official of the Department of Defense was struck by the symptoms and sought medical treatment. We told Greg Edgreen what we'd learned. It tells me that there are no barriers on what Moscow will do, on who they will attack, and that if we don't face this head-on, the problem is going to get worse. The problem first appeared in public in 2016. U.S. officials reported being hurt in Cuba, and the incidents became known as Havana Syndrome. But we have learned it started two years earlier, when at least four Americans reported symptoms in Frankfurt, Germany.

There is also evidence of what could be revenge attacks. For example, in 2014, three CIA officers were stationed in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin's obsession. 2014 was the year that a popular revolt overthrew Putin's preferred leader. Later, those CIA officers went on to other assignments and reported being hit, one in Uzbekistan, one in Vietnam, and the third officer's family was hit in London. If it is Russia, investigative reporter Christo Grozev believes he knows who's involved. In 2018, Grozev was the first to discover the existence of a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, which goes by a number, 29155. These are people who are trained to be versatile assassins and sabotage operators. They're trained in counter-surveillance, they're trained in explosives, they're trained in using poison,

and technology equipment to actually inflict pain or damage to the targets. Grozev works with our collaborators on this report, a magazine called The Insider and Germany's Der Spiegel. He has a long track record uncovering Russian documents, and Grozev says he found one that may link 29155 to a directed energy weapon. And when I saw it, I literally had tears in my eyes because it was spelling out what they had been doing. It's a piece of accounting. An officer of 29155 received a bonus for work on, quote,

potential capabilities of non-lethal acoustic weapons. Which told us that this particular unit had been engaged with somewhere, somehow, empirical tests of a directed energy unit. There it is. There it is. Written down in black and white. It's the closest to a receipt you can have for this. We've also found that Russia's 29155 may have been present in Tbilisi, Georgia,

when Americans reported incidents there. Do you believe that you were attacked? Absolutely. She asked us to withhold her name for her safety. Americans reported incidents there. Do you believe that you were attacked? Absolutely. She asked us to withhold her name for her safety. She is the wife of a Justice Department official who was with the embassy in Tbilisi. She's a nurse with a Ph.D. in anesthesiology. On October 7, 2021, she says that she was in her laundry room when she was also consumed by the sound after a bomb goes off,

that is similar to the sound that I heard. And it just pierced my ears, came in my left side, felt like it came through the window into my left ear. I immediately felt fullness in my head and just a piercing headache. And when I realized that I needed to get out of the laundry room, I left the room and went into our bedroom next door and projectile vomited in our bathroom. We have learned that hers was the second incident that week. Sources tell us earlier in the neighborhood, a U.S. official, their spouse, and child were hit. We have also learned of a phone call that was intercepted nearby. A man says in Russian,

is it supposed to have blinking green lights? And should I leave it on all night? We have no idea what he was talking about. But the next day, the incidents began. Sources tell us that an investigation centered on this Russian, Albert Averyanov. His name on travel manifests and phone records appears alongside known members of Unit 29155. He is also the son of the commander. He was groomed to become a member of the unit since he was 16.

His number is in the phone books of all members of the unit. Clearly, he's more than just the son of the unit since he was 16. His number is in the phone books of all members of the unit. Clearly, he's more than just the son of the boss. He's a colleague of these people. Grozev found Albert Averianoff's phone was turned off during the Tbilisi incidents, but our sources say there is evidence someone in Tbilisi logged into Averianov's personal email during this time. Most likely, Grozev believes Averianov himself, placing him in the city. We believe members of Unit 29155 were there in order to facilitate, supervise, or maybe even personally implement attacks on American diplomats, on American government officials, using an acoustic weapon.

After you were able to get out of the laundry room, call your husband, what did you do then? I went downstairs. I first looked on our security camera, which is right beside our front door, to see if anyone was outside. there was a vehicle right outside of our gate. I took a photo of that vehicle and noticed that it was not a vehicle that I recognized, and I went outside. Did you see anyone around the vehicle? I did. We sent you a photograph of Albert Varianov, and this is the picture that we sent you. You did.

And I wonder if that looks anything like the man you saw outside your home. It absolutely does. And when I received this photo, I had a visceral reaction. It made me feel sick. I cannot absolutely say for certainty that it is this man, but I can tell you that even to this day,

looking at him makes me feel that same visceral reaction, and I can absolutely say that this looks like the man that I saw in the street. This 40-year-old wife and mother is among the most severely injured people we have met. My headaches and brain fog continued. Later on into that weekend, I started having trouble walking down the stairs, specifically at night. I had trouble finding the steps to get down the stairs. So my coordination and vestibular system started just really falling apart. She was medically evacuated, and now doctors say she has holes

in her inner ear canals, the vestibular system that creates the sense of balance. Two surgeries put metal plates in her skull. Another surgery is likely. It's devastating. It's absolutely devastating. Despite experiences like hers, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said last year, it's very unlikely a foreign adversary is responsible. But the DNI also acknowledged that some intelligence agencies had only low or moderate confidence in that assessment.

This month, the National Institutes of Health reported results of brain scans. NIH said there's no evidence of physical damage. But the medical science of so-called anomalous health incidents remains vigorously debated. For its part, the Director of National Intelligence says the symptoms probably result from pre-existing conditions, conventional illnesses, and environmental factors. Attorney Mark Zaid represents more than two dozen AHI clients. What do you make of the intelligence community assessment? So, I've had access to classified information relating to AHI. I can't reveal it. I wouldn't reveal it.

I will tell you that I don't believe it to be the entire story. And I know of information that undermines or contradicts what they are saying publicly. Are you saying that the government wants to cover this up? There is, in my view, without a doubt, evidence of a cover-up. Now, some of that cover-up is not necessarily that, oh, we found a weapon and we don't want anybody to know about it. What I've seen more so is we see lines of inquiry that would take us potentially to answers we don't want to have to deal with. So we're not going to explore any of those avenues. You know, if my mother had seen what I saw, she would say, it's the Russians stupid. Greg Edgreen, who ran the military investigation, told us he had the Pentagon's support.

But in the Trump and Biden administrations, he says, the bar for proof was set impossibly high. I think it was set so high because we did not, as a country and a government, want to face some very hard truths. And what are those? Can we secure America? Are these massive counterintelligence failures? Can we protect American soil and our people on American soil?

Are we being attacked? And if we're being attacked, is that an act of war? After what he learned in his classified investigation, Greg Edgreen retired from the Army to start a company to help the victims. He hopes to channel government contracts into treatment programs. As with all spy stories, much is classified and what remains is circumstantial. None of the witnesses tonight wanted to speak. Some fear for their families. But all felt compelled to shine a light on what they see as a war of shadows, a war America may not be winning.

If this is what we've seen with the hundreds of cases of anomalous health incidents, I can assure you that this has become probably Putin's biggest victory. In his own mind, this has been Russia's biggest victory against the West. In terms of the long term, would you consider this to be life-altering? Absolutely life-altering? Absolutely life-altering for our whole family. The horse has played a central role in the history and mythology

of many Native American tribes. The Shoshone, Crow, Blackfeet, Sioux, and other tribes first saw horses when Spaniards brought them to this continent 500 years ago and have used them in hunting and in battle ever since. Collectively, these tribes call themselves the Horse Nations. As you're about to see, men and women from those tribes also use horses in a sport that fans have dubbed America's original extreme sport. The tribes call it Indian Relay. Its roots date back centuries, and it's one of the most exciting, dangerous, and inspiring things you're ever likely to see.

Welcome to the 2023 Championship of Champions. We start at the start. In Indian relay, as many as six thoroughbred racehorses are brought to a start line drawn in the dirt. The horses are bareback, no saddles or stirrups. Their riders wear no protective gear. At the sound of a horn, they leap aboard and tear down the track. To actually get on a horse bareback and run as fast as you can around is easy. That's easy. Yeah. Ken Real Bird is a sort of senior statesman of Indian relay and announces races all over the American West.

These horses are able to run like you wouldn't believe. But the hard part comes from jumping off. Wait, what? After the riders race one lap around the half-mile track, on a rail, Riley. They all speed into a sort of equine pit row, where teammates are waiting with fresh horses for what's known as the exchange. So he has to come in, gear down enough, and then angle that horse in.

He gets off and takes one, two, three steps, and he's on to the back of that horse. Boom, there he goes. Ken Realberg makes that flying leap from one horse to another sound simple. Go! It is not. It's more like a dangerous, chaotic dance, with riders and horses from six teams all trying to do the same thing at the same time in the same space.

You have what they call the setup man. Their job primarily is to have that horse in the proper position as the rider comes in. Simultaneously, you have a guy who's usually a nimble guy on his feet, and he's got to catch that horse coming in at 15 miles an hour. That horse, he really doesn't care about your feelings. A third member of the pit crew is holding a third horse because the riders must do another leap for another lap. Go, Austin! Go!

It's exciting, but it's dangerous too, isn't it? Yeah. A lot of injuries. Almost every heat will have some of the guys getting run over. Can you imagine the front line of Kansas City Chiefs, all combined in one and just run over you? That's what it's going to feel like because that horse is a thousand pounds. Injuries to both horses and humans are part of the sport. The team that best avoids collisions and wins that third lap on a third horse can be

forgiven for showing off at the finish. Well that was a great race. Ken Real Bird says the roots of modern Indian relay are in the horse-stealing raids that tribes once staged against white settlers and each other. These young men of the different nations would travel when it was middle of the night. They would come and take the prized horse and hightail it back to their home country. They exchanged horses as they were running because they were being pursued. And so that's pretty much the origin of the Indian really sport that we know today.

Races in the organized sport were first conducted in the early 1900s. When they first started out, the majority of these races were happening more within their own communities, Native communities on the reservations. I've seen some races. Calvin Ghost Bear is a member of the Sioux Tribe. Seven heats, eight heats.

And president of an organization called the Horse Nations is we basically took a lot of the races that were within the tribal nations, brought them out into the mainstream, and now we're bringing it on to a bigger stage. Last summer's Indian relay circuit crisscrossed the West and climaxed in Casper, Wyoming, with a three-day championship event that celebrated tribal culture in song and drum and dance and offered more than $100,000 in prize money, thanks to sponsorship from a casino

owned by the Northern Arapaho tribe. This is the ladies. It included a women's division. It's two laps and two horses, rather than the three and three in men's races. But the athleticism and danger are every bit as evident. Now there's no quitting these kids. There's also a kids' Indian relay.

Takes a great tumble. With riders as young as six racing on ponies, climbing on and falling off. He's going to be all right. Those are the guys that grow up to be the great riders, the great set-up men, because they're all horsemen. And it's like that in every reservation. On the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, we met Irvin Carlson and his son Chaz,

who have been competing in Indian relay for years. Chaz is one of the most seasoned riders on the summer circuit. For relay, making you good in the sport is this practice, practice, practice and years of experience. Another team we followed through the Summer Circuit is led by 23-year-old Tuesday Washakie from the Shoshone tribe in Wyoming. Her younger sister Zia is the rider for their women's team. Both feel a close connection to their horses. If you're having a bad day and it's just not going your way,

you can go out and you can catch your horse and ride them and things will just seem to be better. I think that's just how it is. Mason Red Wing feels the same bond and obligation to care for his horses. It's really something special because we're all here for one purpose and it's the horse. Just setting up over here. Mason hails from the Crow Creek Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. When I was younger, I didn't know why I used to feel such anger and animosity towards my own people. I didn't want to be Native American. And the horse helped me, you know, reconnect with my

culture and be proud of who I am and proud of where I'm from. Why were you feeling you didn't like being a Native American? Growing up where I'm from on the reservation, you see a lot of things that make you not proud. Like what? To be where I'm from. Alcoholism, drug addiction, drug abuse, suicide. Suicide rates on the reservation are four or five times the national average. My own father was succumbed to alcoholism.

So it really hit home. You said the horse saved your life. Yep. Yes, sir. Essentially. You think it does that for a lot of young Native American kids? I think so. There's a lot of kids out there that are just looking for that doorway. There's little glamour in Indian Relay and lots of hard work. Every team is self-funded and nearly everyone has a day job to help pay the bills. But the sport is on the rise.

Prize money is increasing and 67 teams competed in last summer's championships. The quality of horses is rising too. Teams go to major racetracks like Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby, to buy sprinters well-suited to Indian relay. Kentucky, that would be the ultimate demonstration race before the Derby. That would be my goal. Lots of thrills and hopefully no spills today. Each team competed in one heat each day of the championships.

Their cumulative time from the first two days determined whether they made the final championship heat on Sunday. Is the race usually won or lost in the exchange? Yeah. It's like a relay team in track and field. But in Indian relay, exchanges involve six riders, 18 horses, 18 other humans, and a cloud of dust.

From what I've seen, it's like... Chaos. Chaos. In the block, it's going to be O.B. Doss. Tuesday, Washakie's women's team made the championship heat in Casper. O.B. Doss is right there. And her sister Zia had a clean exchange in that race. They finished a close second.

I don't know, you get demoralized or does it make make you more determined? It makes me more determined, man. I'd be out here mad as hell, but I shouldn't be. Winning it all is going to be the Timon Trois. The first place women's relay team came from the Colville Reservation in Washington State with rider Talia Timon Trois. Is this your first championship? No, I actually won the first one in Walla Walla. All right. Yeah, when I was 13. And how old are you now?

17. 17? Yeah. Wow. Are you going to do it again next year? Yeah, I'm going to do it as long as I can. I love this game. The day before, we had watched Talia win a heat with her arms raised in a pose of triumph and strength. It is how we connect to the warriors of the past, the warriors of 200 years ago.

It's that same bloodline of that warrior that is cursing through their blood. Over three days of heat, we watched Mason Red Wing and his team go from dirt-pounding frustration when an exchange went wrong to exultation as another went right. Good, good, good. Because we're always searching for that perfect run. They didn't quite find it in the finals. It's for the championship of the world.

The team that did was the one we'd first met months earlier on the Blackfeet Reservation, Irvin Carlson and his son Chaz. So we've been following you like all summer. Like this is the culmination of everything you've done all year. So does this give you bragging rights for a year or what? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. As a tribal elder sang a traditional praise song in honor of their victory and organizers presented them with a check for $20,000,

we noticed a group of kids at the rail, on their ponies, watching intently. What the horse done for me, I know the horse can do that for everyone a thousand times over. And I'm a firm believer in it. I know for a fact it can bring our young men and our young women back. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. 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.

For most Christians, today is Easter Sunday, a day of resurrection, of the triumph of light over darkness. And although Orthodox Christians won't celebrate Easter for another month, it is an Orthodox place of worship that comes to mind. St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and Shrine in Lower Manhattan. We told the story of the resurrection of St. Nicholas back in 2020. Once a tavern, the church lived in the shadow of the World Trade Center and nearly died under its rubble on September 11, 2001, kept alive only by the faith and hope of its tiny congregation and the charity of a much wider community. Today, the new St. Nicholas, its dome aglow with an inner light, sits at the edge of the World Trade Center, resurrected and alive.

Happy Easter. I'm Scott Pelley. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes. There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here? And maybe how to head them off at the pass? That's On the Media's specialty.

Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts.