60 Minutes - 11/12/2023: Iran’s Assassins, The Heritage War, Horse Racing Reform?

Episode Date: November 13, 2023

While Iran’s backing of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon is widely known, the regime is quietly carrying out a shadow war in the U.S. and Europe, deploying proxy assassins to silence or eliminate critics of the regime. Britain’s head of counter-terrorism policing, Matt Jukes, tells correspondent Lesley Stahl they’re noticing a significant uptick in Iran’s efforts. In the U.S., Stahl meets some of the targets, including former White House National Security Adviser John Bolton and Iranian American activist Masih Alinejad. Correspondent Bill Whitaker reports from Kyiv on Russia’s continued war and what Ukrainians say is the deliberate destruction and looting of the country’s museums, churches and monuments – a strategy believed to come straight from the Kremlin – and a potential war crime. Whitaker tours the remains of shelled churches and bombed libraries and speaks with museum workers who are risking their lives to save Ukraine’s heritage. As the Justice Department winds down one of the biggest horse doping investigations in U.S. history, correspondent Cecilia Vega examines the wiretaps that helped solve the case and convict dozens of veterinarians, horse trainers and drug distributors. Lisa Lazarus, the woman heading up the new national regulator tasked with cleaning up horse racing, sits down with Vega to discuss the moment of reckoning and the sport’s future. 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

The FBI says Iran had a plan to kill this Iranian activist here on U.S. soil. When media like you are not paying attention to me, finally they're going to come after me. That's because Iran is intensifying its global effort to kidnap or kill targets, including American officials. This was not Internet chatter. This was a negotiation to murder an American citizen, a former government official. Russia has targeted hundreds of museums, libraries and churches in Ukraine Look at this in what some are calling a cultural genocide. We'll never forgive.

I mean, the cultural legacy, cultural heritage, this is what makes us rich and what we have to protect and pass to future generations. Because destroying our past, Russians try to destroy our future. How big of a problem is doping in horse racing? It's a big problem. It strikes at the integrity of the sport. 60 Minutes goes inside an FBI sting

that exposed doping by veterinarians and horse trainers. We shouldn't do it in broad daylight. We've got to do it like... inside an FBI sting that exposed doping by veterinarians and horse trainers. 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 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 are very few things that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And, of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month. With all of the mysteries that life has to offer, a few certainties can really go a long way.

Subscribe today for the peace of mind you've been searching for. Public Mobile. Different is calling. in Syria and Iraq. It's the latest example, and a serious escalation, of Tehran's use of proxy fighters like Hezbollah and Hamas. Tonight you'll hear of another type of proxy that Iran deploys that receives far less attention. Tehran is hiring hitmen around the world in an effort to intimidate, abduct, and assassinate perceived enemies of the regime. And they're doing it right here on U.S. soil. This video was posted online by a channel affiliated with Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

It vows to kill former American government officials, including President Trump, to avenge the 2020 U.S. assassination of the terrorism mastermind Qasem Soleimani. Threats like this have been deemed credible enough that several of these officials have been under round-the-clock protection, including former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Iran reportedly offered a hitman a million dollars to kill him, and John Bolton, the former National Security Advisor. They bargained the price for me would be $300,000,

which I have to say I found insulting. So what exactly was the plot against you? The Revolutionary Guard sought to procure either my kidnapping or my assassination, not directly by a Revolutionary Guard's member, but by seeking a hitman who would carry out the job either in the U.S. or abroad. The FBI has an arrest warrant out for this Iranian officer claiming that he hired the hitman online to travel to Washington, corner Bolton in a garage, and kill him. But it turned out, lucky for Bolton, the assassin was an FBI informant.

This was not internet chatter. This was a negotiation to murder an American citizen, a former government official. Is the threat against you ongoing? We've got marked Secret Service cars that say police, United States Secret Service, outside my home. We talked to the FBI and several intelligence agencies, and they told us that Iran's efforts are becoming more frequent and bolder, and that they often go after vocal Iranian activists living abroad. The idea behind assassination plot, behind kidnapping plot, is to keep you silent. It's a beautiful family place. We met one of their targets in Brooklyn. Masi Alinajad is a leader in the women's revolt against the law in Iran, mandating they wear a headscarf or hijab.

Forced to flee 14 years ago, she settled here in Brooklyn, where she encourages women back home to send her videos of them taking off the hijabs, and she spreads those images online to her 10 million or so followers, fueling the protest movement. So the mullahs began to focus on you. The FBI came and told you there was a plot against you. There were like six or seven FBI agents. When they came to my house, they told me that your life is in danger. I was like,

okay, tell me something new. Because we Iranians are used to it. But they actually said, nope, this time is different. They said that the Iranian regime hired private investigator on U.S. soil to take photos of your movement, your daily life, your routine. And I was like, wow. So they are here in New York, in Brooklyn. The plot was to kidnap you and take you by speedboat to Venezuela? Hey, it sounds like a scary movie to you. No, it sounds implausible to me.

You see, it's a reality for us. And a reality for the FBI that says the plan was to get her to Iran to stand trial. It was the same for Jamshid Sharma, another Iranian dissident who lived in Los Angeles for two decades, and created a website where people in Iran could report human rights abuses. His family noticed his phone started heading in the wrong direction. His daughter, Giselle Sharma, soon saw her dad pop up on Iranian TV in a courtroom looking petrified. He's forced to confessions about crimes he did not commit. The charge that they gave him is corruption on earth. That's why he got the death sentence. Is it a situation where he could actually be

executed? Oh, yes. Any day? They want to hang him from a crane in the middle of the city. The original plot to kidnap Masi was thwarted. But according to the FBI, a year later, in 2022, Iran paid this Azerbaijani, living outside New York City City $30,000 to buy a semi-automatic rifle and kill her. He lurked outside her home for a week. His plan was to take advantage of her friendliness to her neighbors. He was actually following my life. He knew that. I was the one offering flowers to strangers.

You offered flowers to strangers? Yeah, this is me. So he received a text message from the guy inside Iran saying that, go and knock the door, then take her to the backyard garden. If I had opened the door, I would have just given him a big smile and said, yes, let's go to my garden. And then he wanted to just kill me. Did he actually knock on your door?

Yes. Her home security camera actually caught him on her porch trying to get in. Eventually, he took off, but was pulled over for running a stop sign. That's when the police found this in his car. He's been in custody awaiting trial ever since. But here's what's interesting. Neither he nor two other men the prosecutors say were hired for the job were Iranian. Like him, they were Eastern European, and as is becoming a trademark of Iran's shadow war, they were criminals. They were all from criminal syndicate. This is what the Islamic Republic is really good at, like using drug dealers, using criminals to do their dirty job on the Western soil.

Well, and maybe have deniability. Exactly. We didn't do it. That's the point. So why did they use proxies? To have somebody who is not being tracked by intelligence or security agencies for this. Matt Jukes, head of counterterrorism policing in Britain, says this is not just an American problem. In the UK, they have foiled 15 Iranian kidnapping

and assassination attempts since last year. I have been involved in national security policing for over 20 years. What we've seen in the last 18 months is a real acceleration. We have been told that a lot of these criminal gangs hire other criminal gangs, and then maybe a third group. I think we're always going to see this collaboration between criminal organizations. We know that this will not always be a direct line from a state organization to a threat to a potential kidnapper.

This recording was given to us by a foreign intelligence agency. It shows how Iran recruits criminals. I received a call from the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard. This is an Iranian smuggler from Ermia, a town near the Turkish border. He reveals to the foreign agents that he was approached by Iran's

Revolutionary Guard with a deal. They'll turn a blind eye to his smuggling if he helps them. Their request was that I find people who could work for them. What kind of work? Anything. Like catching someone for us so they can be beaten up or gotten rid of. This surveillance video shows him recruiting a fellow smuggler for the task. The man in white is Mansour Rasouli, an alleged drug dealer. He agreed to arrange assassinations throughout Europe for the Iranian government for money. But a few weeks later, Rasooli was kidnapped at night and interrogated in a car, reportedly by Israeli intelligence. They extracted this cell phone confession

where Rasooli admits he was paid $150,000 up front and promised a million dollars if he killed three people for the Iranians. One is an Israeli at the embassy in Istanbul, Turkey. Another one is an American general in Germany. And one is a journalist in France. The French target was identified as philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy,

a vocal critic of the regime in Tehran. The identity of the American general remains a mystery. The plot to kill the three was prevented, but in recent years, Iranian dissidents were successfully kidnapped and smuggled to Iran. Several were executed. They've succeeded in Europe. They haven't succeeded in the United States, even though we know there are targets. So many American officials and others are being targeted. Why is it not a bigger issue? Look, I think the targeting of American citizens by a hostile foreign government is very close to an act of war.

What would happen if they succeeded in assassinating someone like you, a well-known former official? Well, I wouldn't like to find out for myself or for the country, but why are we sitting here quietly talking about this when they're in effect saying they're going to commit acts of war against American citizens on American soil? Does the fact that Iran feels emboldened to come after our citizens, does that mean we've lost our deterrence? Well, I think we have lost deterrence. And I think this also goes to an unwillingness on the part of the administration to confront the ayatollahs in a way that they understand. They can challenge US government on US soil

without any punishment. Then what's the reason to stop? Well, there are sanctions against them. Sanction is not sufficient. Sanction is not helping. What do you want us to do, drop a bomb? No. Look, when you negotiate with the killers, you're empowering them. The Biden administration didn't respond to our request for an interview.

When Masi Al-Inajad was called to testify before Congress about Iran in September, she said that unless the administration's policy changes, her life will continue to be in danger. I believe that when I'm not in the spotlight, when media like you are not paying attention to me, finally they're going to come after me. While she now has the freedom to speak her mind in America, she does not have the freedom to live where she wants. Masi and her family have had to go into hiding under FBI protection. It's like, wow, the government from my own country trying to kill me, but my adopted

country trying to kill me, but my adopted country trying to protect me. You have to be an Iranian to survive assassination plot, to understand how it feels to survive in America and to have the platform and to criticize the U.S. government. You're tearing up. Tell me why you're tearing up. Because people in my country get killed for criticizing, get shot in head for the crime of criticizing. Meet Tim's new Oreo Mocha Ice Caps

with Oreo in every sip. Perfect for listening to the A-side, or B-side, or bull-side. Order yours on the Tim's app today at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. 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 Last month, a UN report found new evidence that Russia had committed war crimes in Ukraine,

with deliberate killings and widespread use of torture. But they have yet to examine the intentional destruction of cultural property, which also is a war crime. Ukraine accuses Russian forces of targeting churches, libraries, and looting the country's most important museums. And while plunder is as old as war itself, Ukrainian investigators say this is different. They see a campaign of cultural genocide to destroy Ukraine's identity as a nation. Today, a network of cultural warriors in Ukraine is building the case against Russia. It's a heritage war, one told us, and we joined them on the front lines. Not much was left of the tiny village of Vyazivka, a few hours northwest of Kiev, after Russian forces overwhelmed the region last March. But we weren't prepared for this.

My God. So, Ihor, what happened here? Liberation of Ukraine by Russian occupation forces, you see. What this liberation means? Why would they target a church? In this small village, this was the main place, and it was targeted just to destroy what keeps the whole village, the whole community together. Ihor Poshevelo is director of the contemporary Maidan Museum in Kiev. He'd brought us to see the carcass of the Church of the Nativity on Ukraine's heritage list. Poshevelo told us the Russians had deliberately shelled it when they retreated last year. There was no fighting nearby.

Built in 1862, the church had survived two world wars, communism and a revolution, but not this. So what message do you think the Russians were trying to send by destroying this church we are strong you should be a fair fuss and we will do what we want to do we don't need you on this land we don't need your traditions beliefs your culture you are not you do not exist erase you erase you exactly as we sifted through the wreckage pos Pochavello told us the church had been famous for its unique, centuries-old folk art.

And these are all paintings? Yes, and you can see that they still have... Look at this. He told us this was one of 700 churches that have been hit so far. Some were collateral damage. Many were not. To document the destruction, Pochevelo co-founded the Heritage Emergency Response Initiative, a sort of cultural SWAT team that travels to damaged sites interviewing eyewitnesses and saving what they can. It's a nightmare for me

because every morning I get up and I think that it's not reality what we have. And at the same time, the feelings that we will never forgive. Never forgive. We'll never forgive. I mean, the cultural legacy, cultural heritage, this is what makes us rich and what we have to protect and pass to future generations. That's why I can see that it's one of the front lines in this war. Because destroying our past, Russians try to destroy our future. It's not only churches. Hundreds of museums, libraries and monuments have been bombed, burned or shelled. Last February, the Russians razed this small folk museum near Kiev to the ground. Nearby buildings were untouched. Farther east, Russian artillery

destroyed this museum. Locals carried out the only surviving statue of its patron saint like a wounded patient. Pashavello and others told us they believe it's a strategy that comes straight from the Kremlin. For years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has publicly dismissed Ukraine's right to exist at all. We are all Russians, he said. Many museum workers have been arrested, even kidnapped by Russian soldiers. You don't usually think of museum workers as being in danger. They are among the first people Russians come for. Why? Well, first of all, they are interested in the collections.

Where did they hide the collections? What is the value of the collections? And the second reason is museum workers are leaders in their community. Milena Chorna is head of international exhibits at the National War Museum in Kyiv. She helped set up a museum crisis hotline for workers in the war zone trying to save their collections. They were soon swamped with calls for help, sending money for Russian bribes, devising escape routes,

hiding paintings, and sometimes just to talk. You cut off all your emotions, trying to do everything you can to help. Putting it all through yourself, it is really difficult. And at some point you realize, yeah, that you have a PTSD already, although you haven't been to the forefront. Milena Churna told us many workers actually moved

into their museums to help guard the collections, even as the bombs fell. In the north, during the siege of Churna Hiv, she told us about one museum worker who moved in with her eight-year-old daughter. There was no electricity, no water, no heat. When it got really bad... Weeks later, volunteers trying to deliver a generator to the museum were killed. She stayed? She stayed. She stayed until the liberation, yes. And now she is in the army.

What do you think of that? I believe at some point she might have acknowledged that what we are doing is not good enough. And at some point we will all have to become soldiers. We might all have to become soldiers. Ukraine has accused Russia of looting more than 30 museums, calling it the biggest art theft since the Nazis in World War II. In Kherson, Russian soldiers cut paintings from frames, dragged out priceless antiques, and cleaned out more than 10,000 works of art.

Even so, Chorna told us, many museum workers wouldn't leave. How can I leave these things to be looted or destroyed if I know it's the history that will last for generations? Can you explain that passion to me? I might not be able to say that without emotions. But I think that, well, speaking of myself, I understand that the value of these items is much higher than the price of my life. Higher than the price of your life. Yes, because the scope of effect these artifacts can have on future generations, it's incomparable to the scope of effect me, myself, a single person can do for the culture.

Chorna told us a top Russian target was Ukraine's priceless Scythian gold collection at the Melitopol Museum. Museum workers hastily hid the treasures in cardboard boxes in the museum's dank, unfinished basement. When the Russians invaded, they wasted no time before heading to the museum, threatening to shoot the locks off the door to break in. This CCTV footage, never broadcast before, shows the Russians harassing employees, searching the museum, stashing what they took in white cloth sacks. That morning, they left without finding the gold. Undeterred, a group of soldiers turned up

at the door of museum director Lila Ibramova and kidnapped her. They put a bag over your head and kidnapped you? I was very scared, she told us. There were eight of them. They were wearing balaclavas and carried machine guns. One soldier did all the talking. They turned my house upside down. Then they put a bag on my head and put me

in a car. Ibramova is in hiding, so we agreed not to show her face. She told us the Russians interrogated her about the museum, but she refused to cooperate. They let her go, but when her name later surfaced on a Russian execution list, she fled the country. My life was at risk, she told us, and staying would jeopardize my colleagues, my family. I was afraid my husband and son would be searched again. In the end, the Russians found the gold. 198 ancient gold artifacts worth untold millions. The Russians' plunder has all the earmarks of a war crime, according to Vitaly Tidish, a criminal lawyer of 30 years.

What tells you that this was deliberate? He leads a new unit of the Ukrainian military investigating Russia's targeting of heritage sites. Intentionally looting or destroying cultural property during a war is a crime. But Tidich told us the Russians have flipped the law on its head. The Russians keep saying they're evacuating these artifacts to safeguard them during the fighting, he told us, and they will return them when the war is over. That is a lie, and we are ready to prove it. But Tidich told us he's under no illusions. There have only been two convictions for cultural war crimes since the law was passed in 1954.

So Ukraine wants to prosecute Russia for war crimes since the law was passed in 1954. So Ukraine wants to prosecute Russia for war crimes. How likely do you think they will actually be prosecuted? I'm worried, he told us. The international treaties to prevent war crimes have not proven effective, nor, he said, has the International Criminal Court. But that's all we've got. Okay, let's go in. In the village of Lukashivka, outside Chernihiv, museum director Ihor Pochavello showed us what was left after the Russians set up a base camp inside this church, a protected architectural monument. This is really something.

In the battle to force the Russians out, a massive fire demolished the church's historic frescoes. Here's also, you can see, you can see the plaster from the wall. You still have the cross here. Yeah. So the church itself had so many layers of history and culture,

but everything is lost now. In the nave... Look at this. This was all that was left. Pochavello told us this war is about more than land. This is the war against our historical memory, against our being Ukrainian. You said before, against your soul. Against, exactly, against our soul,

against everything which makes us Ukrainians, and this is from Russia. And this war has the signs of being a genocide war against Ukrainian nation. You consider this genocide? Yes. Because it's an attempt to totally destroy Ukraine and the Ukrainian nation. But it will never work, Pushyvaylo told us.

The more the Russians attack, the more resilient Ukrainians become. We saw proof of that at the Holy Dormition Cathedral in Kiev. A 3D laser scanner was meticulously capturing every architectural detail so that if disaster strikes, the church can be rebuilt. It's work that's going on across the country, saving the cultural soul of Ukraine for future generations. The new BMO VI Porter MasterCard is your ticket to more. More perks. More points.

More flights. More of all the things you want in a travel rewards card. And then some. Get your ticket to more with the new BMO VI Porter MasterCard and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit bmo.com slash theiporter to learn more. The Justice Department is winding down one of the biggest horse doping investigations in U.S. history. Tonight, you'll hear the incriminating wiretaps that helped crack the case, convicting 29 veterinarians, horse trainers, and drug distributors.

Horse racing, known as the sport of kings, found its crown badly tarnished last spring when a dozen horses died during the week surrounding the Kentucky Derby. And just days ago in California, two horses died before the Breeders' Cup. Horse racing has reached its moment of reckoning, and we wanted to know, can the sport really be reformed, or is it too late? It was a sweet finish to this year's Kentucky Derby. A stealth newcomer named Mage defying 15 to 1 odds to win the race. But the celebration at Churchill Downs capped off a startling run up to the race.

Five horses were scratched, including the favorite Forte. And then there was the death toll. A dozen at the height of this year's season, leading the track to temporarily suspend racing. Investigators were unable to find a singular explanation for their fatalities. Take charge Brianna injured her front leg and was euthanized. Lost in limbo hurt his leg, collapsed on the track and was later put down. Then in Maryland on the day of the Preakness Stakes, this horse named having a meltdown threw off his jockey after injuring his front leg and also had to be euthanized. In June, we spoke with the woman newly charged with trying to make the sport safer,

Lisa Lazarus, the chief executive officer of HISA, the Horse Racing Integrity and Safety Authority. People who are not in your world see this headline of more than a dozen dead horses, and they think, what is going on in that industry? And my response to that is, HISA is here now, and we're going to address it. Lazarus was legal counsel for the International Governing Body of Equestrian Sports and spent her childhood going to the racetrack with her father. She joined Hiza last year after it was created by Congress, the most sweeping effort yet to clean up the sport, which for years has grappled with drugs and cheating.

There's clearly a problem that needs to be addressed, and now we've got some tools to fight it. And so we really owe it to those trainers who have spent their lives in this sport and who are, you know, who have an incredible amount of integrity to get rid of those that are really tarnishing the sport. We're talking about the most high profile races of the year in this country. Do you think drugs had anything to do with these deaths? You know, it's a great question. Now that we have oversight over all of it, I feel a lot more confident that we're going to be able to do our job. Just days after we met Lazarus at Belmont Park in New York,

two more horses died at that very track after injuring their legs. The deaths have added to questions about the future of the sport and whether Hiza can improve safety and stay ahead of corrupt trainers and veterinarians who have taken extraordinary steps to outsmart regulators. How big of a problem is doping in horse racing? It's a big problem. It strikes at the integrity of the sport. It's not good for the horses. There's just nothing about it that is acceptable. Stuart Janney is a man whose pedigree is legendary in the horse racing world. His family once owned the champion thoroughbred Seabiscuit.

As chairman of the Jockey Club, an organization that registers thoroughbreds, Janney testified before Congress in 2018 and called for establishing a national anti-doping program. This issue is extremely important to the thoroughbred industry and especially to the Jockey Club, which has been advocating for medication reform in our sport for decades. In a word, could you describe what horse racing regulation has been like in the last 50 years? A failure, and increasingly so.

It's gotten worse. It's gotten worse. And quite frankly, states have not done their job. For decades, the sport was entirely overseen by state racing commissions that struggled to stop repeat drug violations, notably by the sport's most high-profile trainer, Bob Baffert. Baffert has been cited for dozens of drug violations in connection with some of his horses over the last four decades. He was suspended by Churchill Downs in 2021 after his horse Medina Spirit won the Kentucky Derby but was later

disqualified after testing positive for a banned substance. I've got to tell you, when you talk about something that sounds like it is as institutionalized as corruption has been, I don't know how you clean that up. Well, I think you put people away. You send them out of the sport, and some of them go to jail. In March of 2020, a set of sweeping federal indictments laid out the extent of the corruption, with doping and animal cruelty on full display at the highest levels of the sport. These animals were injected and force-fed

all manner of illegal and experimental drugs. According to the indictments, veterinarians and trainers plotted to give horses banned substances they called monkey and red acid to make them run faster, including the same kind of blood builders cyclist Lance Armstrong took. Prosecutors said they also used painkillers, including snake venom, that deadened nerves so the horses could run through injuries. The FBI said it led to broken legs, cardiac issues, and in some cases, death. What actually happened to the horses amounted to nothing less than abuse. Using a trove of wiretaps, the Justice Department charged 33 veterinarians,

trainers, and drug distributors, including some of the biggest names in the business, like Jason Service, who trained Maximum Security, the first-place finisher at the 2019 Kentucky Derby, before the horse was disqualified for interference by drifting outside his lane. Prosecutors also charged top-earning trainer Jorge Navarro, heard on this expletive-filled wiretap, bragging to another trainer about how the drugs made his horse run faster. Navarro's reputation for doping horses was such an open secret, prosecutors say he went by the nickname The Juice Man and wore it on his shoes like a badge of honor. That's him on the right in the dark pink shirt. Navarro administered banned drugs to one of his most famous horses, XY Jet,

ahead of a race in Dubai where the horse won a million and a half dollar prize. According to the indictment, Navarro said, I gave it to him through 50 injections. I gave it to him through the mouth. The following year, Navarro announced that XY Jet died from a heart attack. It stood out to Sean Richards, the lead FBI agent on the case. In those wiretaps, you hear Navarro telling another trainer how close he came to getting busted. He says he would have been caught, quote, pumping and pumping and fuming every horse that ran that day. You hear that and you think, what?

We're right where we need to be. You know, we have a really, really good subject identified and we're getting fantastic evidence. He spent his childhood on a horse farm and his career busting Russian mobsters. Both proved invaluable in infiltrating the dark side of the horse racing world. It didn't take long for Agent Richards to figure out that vets and drug distributors were constantly finding ways to outsmart the testing system. They would change one molecule in that sequence, and now, even if they had a test,

if they don't have the latest test for that substance, they'll never find it. So an investigator comes in with a test, looking for this drug. They tweak it by a molecule here or there. Now, your test is no good. If it's not testable, they can't get in trouble for it. This game of cat and mouse that they're playing to stay ahead of investigators is how dangerous to the horses being injected.

It's terrible. You don't know what's in those substances. Much of the evidence in the investigation began with one man's gut feeling. New York commercial real estate magnate Jeff Gorel is an owner of Meadowlands Racetrack in New Jersey. The biggest venue in the country for harness racing, a niche betting sport where horses pull drivers in carts. What had you seen that made you suspicious that drugs were that rampant? You would see horses that were going a certain speed,

and then the new trainer would take over, and the next week the horse would be two seconds faster. And that, in your opinion, is a giant red flag. It's impossible. It's impossible. It's impossible to get a horse to go two seconds faster, and you would see it consistently. What do you think drove these guys?

Greed. The same thing that drives everybody. So Gorell outright banned trainers he suspected of doping and hired retired state police officer Bryce Cody to conduct surprise blood and urine tests. If you wanted to race here, you had to sign an agreement that said that we can show up at any time and ask your veterinarian to supply us with a drug sample,

and we can do whatever we want with it. Unannounced testing. Unannounced. That's the key, just like baseball and football. And what were the results? Most of the samples came back negative, but some came back for drugs that nobody knew about. Gorel then hired the investigative firm Five Stones. Five Stones Intelligence, for such a time as this.

Stuart Janney and the Jockey Club had also hired Five Stones, which had worked for the World Anti-Doping Agency's Independent Commission investigating Russian doping in track and field. Did you give them any specific instructions in terms of who they should or should not go after? Yes. I said, I'm not interested in you going and finding a relatively unimportant person working in somebody's barn that has made a bet they shouldn't have made or done something that's, you know, immaterial to what we're talking about. You wanted big fish. I want you to go after the important people that I think are corrupting the sport.

Janney got what he wanted. Five Stones passed its leads to the FBI's Sean Richards, who gathered a mountain of evidence, including this wiretap, where, according to investigators, trainers Jason Service and Jorge Navarro are heard stressing just how bad it would be if they got caught with illicit drugs. We shouldn't do it in broad daylight.

We got to do it like... No, no, no, no, no. I keep it in my car. I don't want to do all that. What about what I am? I don't want people to see that we're dead. Yeah. And investigators say this wiretap captured trainer Nick Surick talking about covering

up for Navarro. You know how many horses he killed and broke down that I made him disappear? The FBI found hundreds of vials linked to veterinarian Seth Fishman heard in another wiretap boasting about his drugs. I'm mostly looking to filter harm somehow. Well, there's all levels. I mean, that's where we can speak in person. You can go to something for pain or you can do something to increase blood.

I mean, yes, you know, there's many options, you know. You're a horse guy. Mm-hmm. Where does that sit with you? It's completely wrong. To pump these horses full of stuff that you don't know what's in it for, you know, a potential chance to win at a higher rate. It's disgusting behavior.

Seth Fishman was sentenced to 11 years in prison. The Juice Man, Jorge Navarro, and Nick Surick were sentenced to five years, and this past July, Jason's service to four, all for doping-related crimes. How long is it going to take to clean this up? It'll probably take years to be truly confident that we've got a fully cleaned spore. Since Hiza's anti-doping program opened its doors in May, 33 trainers in the United States have been suspended for banned substances. This past summer, at the Saratoga Racecourse in New York, 13 more horses died.

Those deaths are under investigation. 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 story we reported two weeks ago. A quiet invasion told how the small country of Georgia continues to struggle to maintain its independence from Russia,

which already occupies 20% of the former Soviet Republic's land. Georgia's president, Salome Zorobashvili, told our Sharon Alfonsi that her country needs stronger Western support in its effort to join the European Union. What happens to Georgia if the EU denies the bid? It will be a big victory for Russia. This past Wednesday was a big victory for Georgia. The European Commission recommended Georgia as a candidate for EU membership. The next step is meeting a list of reforms and conditions that will qualify it for accession — full membership.

I'm Cecilia Vega. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.