60 Minutes - 11/29/2015: The Last Prisoner, The Execution of Joseph Wood, Taking on the Eiger

Episode Date: November 30, 2015

Alan Gross tells correspondent Scott Pelley about his five years as a prisoner in Cuba and his activities that led up to his arrest in his first interview. Correspondent Bill Whitaker examines the execution of Joseph Wood, who died by lethal injection after nearly two hours, and the drugs being used in the procedure. And correspondent Anderson Cooper visits the Eiger of the Swiss Alps to witness a new breed of daredevil, plunging down mountains instead of climbing them. 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 first season of Georgie and Mandy is a bonafide hit. Be cool, okay? We don't say it out loud. Hmm, okay. Can we just say it's great? Thank you for saying that, Elway. With lots and lots of laughs. So everybody knows. I only told Mandy.

I only told Mom and Dad. That's everybody. So, quick summary. Laugh at Georgie and Mandy's first marriage with all episodes now streaming on Paramount Plus and returning new CBS Fall. yes also yes they threatened to hang me they threatened to pull out my fingernails they said I'd never see the light of day it has been nearly a year since Alan Gross became the linchpin for the diplomatic breakthrough with Cuba. But why was he a prisoner there? And what were those years like?

I wasn't a spy. This is the first interview with the last prisoner from the Cold War. This is absolutely ridiculous. Cuba, you want to put your finger in the U.S. government's eye? Go ahead, but leave me out of it. Five years ago, when Arizona needed drugs to execute an inmate named Jeffrey Landrigan, it purchased them illegally from a supplier operating out of this driving school in London. It's my understanding that there was a paperwork issue. The proper forms weren't filled out. Was it used in the execution of Mr. Landrigan? Yes. This office, the state of Arizona, knew or should have known that it was illegal to import these drugs.

Bill, I was not the attorney general when that happened, and I don't want to use that as an excuse. But this office is the top legal office. Right. Okay, you're good? Okay, three, two, one, go! JT launches off the summit. Champion speed rider Valentin Deleuze quickly follows, videotaping for us with a camera on his helmet. The ride of a lifetime has begun.

Standing there on the top of the mountain, what goes through your mind? There's two mindsets. You know, there's the Evel Knievel, which is kind of kamikaze, and then there's the James Bond. Which one are you? I'm Bond. I'm Steve Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Morley Safer. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Bill Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl.

I'm Morley Safer. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. The first season of Georgie and Mandy is a bona fide hit. Be cool, okay? We don't say it out loud.

Hmm, okay. Can we just say it's great? Thank you for saying that, Elway. With lots and lots of laughs. So everybody knows. I only told Mandy. Well, I only told Mom and Dad. That's everybody.

So, quick summary. Laugh at Georgie and Mandy's first marriage with all episodes now streaming on Paramount Plus and returning new CBS Fall. Yes, yes, also yes. The new opening to Cuba would not have happened without an old-fashioned swap. Cuban spies were being held in U.S. prisons, and the Cubans were holding an American named Alan Gross.

Gross was a U.S. government contractor who was setting up Internet connections in Cuba, but the Cuban government said he was a spy. It has been nearly a year since Gross became the linchpin for the diplomatic breakthrough. But why was he there, and what were his years in prison like? This is the first interview with the last prisoner of the Cold War. They threatened to hang me. They threatened to pull out my fingernails. They said I'd never see the light of day. I had to do three things in order to survive. Three things every day. I thought about my family that survived the Holocaust. I exercised religiously every day. And I found something every day to laugh at.

Did you think in those early days, boy, the U.S. government's going to get me out of here in the next week or so? Oh, I absolutely did for the first two weeks. And then I said to myself, where the hell are they? Where are they? I, you know, I figured I, I didn't think, I didn't have any idea I'd be there for five years. I knew I was in trouble. I knew I was in trouble. Alan Gross was attracted to trouble. He's 66, a native of Maryland, an electronics specialist who spent 20 years making the rounds of war and disaster, setting up communications for relief agencies. And that's why we say when we would connect, when we'd align the antenna and connect to the

satellite, we'd be lighting the candle. We'd light her up. And we did that in a lot of places. In 2008, the place was Cuba. Gross was hired by the U.S. Agency for International Development. USAID is America's charity, delivering aid all around the world. But in Cuba, its mission was different. USAID asked Gross to set up independent Internet connections for the Jewish community. Only 5% of Cubans were online. But bypassing government censorship was illegal. Still, Gross put together an equipment list that would do just that. The key was a device called a BGAN satellite modem that made a direct

connection to a satellite. On his first trip to Havana, he put a piece of tape over the Hughes 9201 model number and walked his equipment through the airport. So once Cuban Customs had cleared your equipment through on that very first trip. You concluded what from that? That bringing equipment into Cuba wasn't that difficult. They had every opportunity to stop me from bringing that equipment in. They knew what that equipment was. And if they didn't, that's, you know, shame on them.

In the spring of 2009, he set up two systems at synagogues. But the people he was helping warned him about getting caught. Gross wrote to his supervisors that the project was playing with fire. It was on his third trip that he spotted trouble. I saw a van rolling down the street and a gentleman was walking next to it with a whip antenna and a looked like a voltage meter and essentially he was checking for radio transmissions and and he rolled right by the synagogue. After that, Gross proposed to USAID that he add sophisticated equipment

that could mask the BGAN location. He wrote, discovery of BGAN usage would be catastrophic. You recognize the danger at that point. Why did you go back two more times? Well, the danger didn't seem so dangerous because I came home and I still had a contract to fulfill. Look, you keep saying you had a contract to fulfill. That's not all that's going on here. No, that's it. You believed in the work. I do believe that access to information is a right for everyone,

but I've never interfered or participated in any kind of political activity overseas. You were bringing free speech to an oppressed people under the nose of a government that did not want that to happen. Three billion people every day log on to the internet around the world? How could that be circumventing the government? Now, it might sound a little bit naive. So I'm naive. Mr. Gross, you can tell me that... You can call me Alan. Alan, you can tell me that you believed in what you were doing,

but you can't tell me you didn't know what you were doing. I knew exactly what I was doing. I was setting up internet connectivity for the Jewish community in Cuba. It was very simple. Get them connected. That was it. But it ceased to be simple on his fifth trip when four men pulled him out of his Havana hotel. He was driven to a police station where a man who seemed to be a doctor ordered him to take a pill he said was a sedative. So I took the pill. He gave me a juice box. And as I'm drinking the juice box, swallowing the pill, he said, that's it, that's right, drink, drink.

And I thought I was in an old Humphrey Bogart movie. And then they took me to a hospital. They took my clothes. They gave me these striped pajamas. You spent the night where? I spent the first night and most of the next five years at the Carlos Finley Military Hospital. Here in Havana, Gross was held in a room 18 feet by 18 with two other prisoners. Every day for the first year, he was interrogated. It was terrible. It was a time of sensory deprivation for me, especially that first year.

The place was infested with ants and roaches. I didn't have any meat, really, for five years. You lost 100 pounds. Actually, I lost 110 pounds. This is gross with his lawyer during his imprisonment. He lost five teeth to lack of nutrition, and yet he says he forced himself to walk 10,000 steps a day in circles. It turned out his legal case was on the same path. It was more than a year before he went to trial for subverting the government.

I call it the kangaroo court. His wife, Judy, was in the court. The prosecutor went on for over an hour talking about the United States, never mentioned Allen's name. He started, I think, with the Eisenhower administration. The United States was on trial and Allen was Uncle Sam. Absolutely, absolutely. The sentence, 15 years.

My heart sunk. Then I thought, you know, we have to start moving furiously and do everything we can. Judy Gross held a rally every Tuesday outside Cuba's unofficial embassy in Washington, and she protested at the White House. The worst thing that could happen would be for people to forget his name. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you made sure that didn't happen. And I was afraid that the government had already forgotten his name.

The government that sent Alan Gross on his mission seemed helpless. Years stretched on. Judy Gross lost their home, unable to make the mortgage. There was a time in this imprisonment that you stopped eating. I decided that I would go on a hunger strike to protest both governments' lack of leadership and lack of effort to resolve this situation. It was ridiculous. I wasn't a spy.

I wasn't a smuggler. I wasn't a criminal. This is absolutely ridiculous. Cuba, you want to put your finger in the U.S. government's eye? Go ahead, but leave me out of it. U.S. government, you want to send people to countries where we have no diplomatic relations and run cockamamie programs? Go ahead, but leave me out of it and get me the hell out of here. One person in Washington who felt the same way was Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

Leahy thought USAID had bungled a project more suited to the CIA and he had a word for it. Why do you say that the USAID program was stupid? Well they're not a spy agency so they shouldn't do things to make it look like that. And I think it was a disservice to the all the men and women who work so well for our country with USAID around the world. In 2010, Leahy asked his top aide, Tim Reeser, to figure out what Cuba wanted for Alan Gross. They were fed up with the USAID program. I think they also wanted a bargaining chip. They wanted their prisoners back, and they wanted to make a point.

Their prisoners were celebrated in Havana as the Cuban Five, intelligence agents sentenced to long terms in U.S. prisons for espionage. How hard was it for the United States to give up these five prisoners? I can tell you that when Senator Leahy first raised this, the response was, it's a non-starter. Impossible. We're not doing anything like that. So our response was, well, then Alan Gross is going to die in Cuba.

Senator Leahy made two trips to Cuba, and in 2013, he and his wife, Marcel, met Adriana Perez, the wife of one of the five Cubans in U.S. prison. She said to Marcel, I love my husband the way you love your husband. I may never see him out of prison. I want to have his baby. Will you help us?

We talked about it, and if there's something that we can do that the Cubans care about that doesn't cost us anything, why not do it? I talked to the Bureau of Prisons. I talked to the State Department. It became clear that there was only one option, and that was artificial insemination. So Reeser arranged for a special delivery from the U.S. prison to a clinic in Panama. Adriana Perez became pregnant, and a new day in Cuban relations was born. I think that was reflected in the conversations that the Cubans were having with people in the administration also.

They each remarked that the tone had changed. Just the way they talked to each other was better. Secret talks of a different tone went on for months. Gross had no idea. He told his family he would not live another year in prison. Then came a rare phone call with his wife. And she said, Alan, we're never going to talk like this again. You get it? I got it. I got it. I got it.

She couldn't say it in the clear on the phone. No, but she was very clear in her wording, in her verbiage, that I was coming home. The next day, December 17, 2014, two planes landed in Havana, one with the Cuban prisoners, the other with Senator Leahy and Judy Gross. Later that morning, President Obama announced the trade, which also included an unnamed Cuban

who had worked for U.S. intelligence. Diplomatic relations were reestablished after more than half a century. En route to America, Alan Gross got a call from the president. And after years in prison, we are overjoyed that Alan Gross is back where he belongs. Welcome home, Alan. We're glad you're here. And weeks later, a shout out at the State of the Union address. I've worked in 54 countries around the world. Every time my plane would touch down on U.S. soil,

I was grateful to be home. Grateful. And that night in particular, I was humbled. You know, I'm curious. What did you say to your captors on leaving? Hasta la vista, baby. Seriously? Seriously.

When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer.

So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. In July of last year, Joseph Wood was strapped to a gurney in Arizona's death chamber. His execution by lethal injection with a new cocktail of drugs was supposed to take about 10 minutes. It took almost two hours, the longest execution in U.S. history. When lethal injections were introduced in 1977, they were supposed to be a more humane form of capital punishment.

Instead, the process has become a messy testing ground for unproven toxic drugs. At the heart of the problem, pharmaceutical companies have banned the use of their drugs for capital punishment, partly under pressure from death penalty opponents. Without access to the lethal agents they have used for decades, the states are turning to new, untried drugs. And that's creating an execution crisis in America, making it harder and harder to ensure that when a state decides to end a life, things don't go horribly awry as they did in the execution of Joseph Wood.

Arizona is one of 31 states to employ capital punishment. Cameras aren't allowed here, but this Department of Corrections video takes us inside Death Row, where more than 100 inmates are awaiting execution by lethal injection. On July 23, 2014, it was Joseph Wood's turn. Wood had been convicted of murdering his former girlfriend and her father. At 1.52 p.m., Arizona executioners began pumping an experimental combination of drugs into Wood's veins. They had never before used these drugs for execution, but they expected Wood to die within minutes. Among the witnesses that day were Deacon Ed Schaefer, Wood's attorney Dale

Baish, and reporter Michael Kiefer. It seemed to go as normal. They put in the catheters, they announced that they were administering the drug, and he closed his eyes and went to sleep. And about 11 minutes in, I noticed his lip quiver. And a minute later, he gasped. A few seconds later, he did it again, and then again and again and again. It was loud. It wasn't just, you know, some nice, peaceful sleeping sound. Were you thinking at this point something's gone wrong? Everybody was thinking something went wrong.

You could see the looks on the faces of the people from the Department of Corrections who were standing along the side. You know, they were looking at each other nervously. You tried to have the execution stopped. While Joe Wood was on the table gasping and gulping, we were arguing to a federal judge that he should stop the execution. On what grounds? That it wasn't working. about four rosaries, four complete rosaries, and there's five decades to each rosary,

and each one can take anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes. And that told you that this was going on for a very long time? Hour and 58 minutes. That's a long time to be sitting there watching somebody die. Before the federal judge could rule, Joseph Wood was dead. It was supposed to take just one dose of the drugs to kill him. Prison logs show before it was over, executioners had injected Wood 15 times with the new cocktail of drugs. Someone made the decision to inject 14 additional doses of that drug into Mr. Wood.

That's not something that has ever been done before, so they were making it up as they went along. In several rulings, the Supreme Court has reaffirmed the Eighth Amendment. Punishment must not be cruel and unusual. Joseph Wood's lingering death set off alarms across the country and prompted an independent investigation in Arizona. Was Joseph Woods' execution botched? Well, Bill, I think botched is a very inflammatory word. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich told us he sees nothing wrong in the way Wood's execution was carried out. It took almost two hours.

That's the longest execution in U.S. history. At the end of the day, though, the independent report, the medical examiner, all concluded that Mr. Wood was sedated the entire time, was unresponsive to stimuli, and he was feeling no pain whatsoever. How do you know that? Were there sensors? Was anybody taking brain, you know, how do you know he wasn't feeling pain? Ultimately you can't know because the person's dead. So if two hours isn't too long, what is?

Three hours? Would that cause alarm? Well, once again, I think two hours, three hours, four hours, when someone's on the death gurney and they're unconscious, I don't think they're worried about the time. In this instance, it happened to take longer, but that does not mean that it was botched. What would you call it? I would call it that you had somebody who was a heinous killer that murdered people in cold blood and eventually received justice. There's no dispute of Joseph Wood's guilt. In August of 1989, Wood, a 31-year-old

vet addicted to methamphetamines, walked into this auto body shop in Tucson, Arizona, shot and killed his former girlfriend, Deborah Dietz, and her father, Eugene Dietz, in cold blood in broad daylight. Richard and Jeannie Brown remember that day well. You actually saw Joe Wood kill your sister-in-law. She's saying, no, Joe, don't do it, don't do it. And he shot her anyways. It was one of the worst days of my life. In 40 seconds, Eugene Dietz and Deborah Dietz were dead. And my mom looked at me and she walked up and gave me a hug, and she said, your dad and sister were just killed. You witnessed his execution? Yes.

What was that day like for you? That day was one of the best days of my life because he finally got it. Everybody can say he went inhumanely. It was a horrible death. I wonder if we were all sitting in the same room and if we all saw the same thing because he went peacefully. And I'm sure my dad and my sister did not go peacefully. This is a murderer. He committed a heinous crime. Why worry about his last two hours on earth? We're not medical doctors.

We don't know whether Joe would experience pain. But what we do know is that under the Constitution, there cannot be cruel and unusual punishment, and there cannot be a lingering death. I witnessed other executions by lethal injection and I had never seen anything like that. Lethal injections were supposed to be a civilized step up from the brutality of electrocutions and the spectacle of public hangings. Former President Ronald Reagan described execution by lethal injection as just like falling asleep. I just think that the whole idea of using drugs is foolish. Alex Kaczynski is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit,

which covers the West, including Arizona, where Joseph Wood was executed. All rise. Kaczynski was appointed to the bench by President Reagan and is one of the most prominent conservative judges in the country. He is in favor of the death penalty, but is opposed to lethal injection. The state of Arizona and other states want to make this look like it's benign, want to make it look like, oh, it's just a medical procedure. They ought to just face the idea that this is cruel and this is violent,

and they ought to use some method that reflects that. But we used to do all kinds of things to kill people. We used to have the electric chair. We used to have the gas chamber. We used to hang people, even publicly. Many people were executed by electric chair, but then it was switched away from that because it was thought to be something that caused pain. So that's why most states moved to lethal injection. And as a result, those people who strongly opposed the death penalty moved to stop the flow of drugs that are available for execution. So now states have to scramble for ever more exotic drugs to try to carry out a death penalty.

Pharmaceutical companies also grew alarmed that drugs developed to heal were being used to kill, and they refused to sell them for use in executions. The U.S. government now prohibits the import of the drugs. We found 15 states have begun to improvise their own lethal concoctions. The result? A number of bungled executions. Last year in Ohio, convicted murderer Dennis McGuire gasped and convulsed on the gurney for 25 minutes before dying. In Oklahoma, Clayton Lockett, convicted of rape and murder, was

administered an untested combination of drugs. He struggled violently, groaned and writhed. A witness later said it was like watching a person being tortured to death. Prison officials moved to stop the execution, but Lockett would die of a heart attack 43 minutes after the drugs first entered his veins. Lockett's execution prompted President Barack Obama to call for a wide-ranging federal review of executions. What happened in Oklahoma is deeply troubling. In the application of the death penalty in this country, we have seen significant problems. Most states have laws making lethal injection the only option for executions.

With the drugs now unavailable, we found six states have skirted federal law and turned to black market dealers to get their hands on them. Five years ago, when Arizona needed drugs to execute an inmate named Jeffrey Landrigan, it purchased them illegally from a supplier operating out of this driving school in London. On customs forms obtained by 60 Minutes, the state claimed the imported drugs were for animal use. We asked the current Attorney General, Mark Brnovich, if those drugs were used for the Landrigan execution. The importing of the drug that you were trying to use for his execution was illegal. It's against U.S. law for that drug to be imported. It's my understanding that there was a paperwork issue. The proper forms weren't filled out. Was it used in the execution of Mr. Landrigan? Yes. This office, the state of Arizona, knew or should have known that it was illegal to import these drugs.

Bill, I was not the attorney general when that happened, and I don't want to use that as an excuse. But this office is the top legal office. Right. And all I can assure you is that as long as I'm attorney general, we will follow all state and federal regulations and all state and federal laws when it comes to obtaining and using the drugs and the executions here in Arizona. After our interview, newly released documents revealed the Arizona Department of Corrections once again purchased banned execution drugs abroad. Federal authorities seized the illegal imports. Arizona now is trying to get them back. We execute individuals not because we want to or

we get some sort of bloodlust out of it. We do it because we feel like we have to. And we will do everything we can to make sure that they're killed in the most efficient manner possible. The death penalty in Arizona has been blocked by a lawsuit since the problems with Joseph Woods' execution. The state is fighting in court to resume capital punishment by lethal injection. I would eliminate the entire controversy. I would use a bullet or a series of bullets. They're fast, they're effective, nobody ever survives. Go back to the firing squad.

Make it look like an execution. Mutilate the body, and this would express the sense that that's what we're doing, that we're actually committing violence on another human being. I read that you have even thought the guillotine might be a good way to execute. Oh, yes. Really? The guillotine works, never fails.

It's quick. It's effective. You do know what that sounds like, hearing a judge sort of be an advocate for the guillotine. Tell me. Barbaric. Death penalty is barbaric. And I think we as a society need to come face to face with that. If we're not

willing to face up to the cruelty, we ought not to be doing it. The Eiger in the Swiss Alps is one of the most forbidding mountains in the world. Locals call it the Ogre. And for more than a century, this monster of a mountain has attracted thrill-seekers eager to risk their lives on its nearly vertical slopes. More than 60 climbers have frozen or fallen to their deaths. Now, a new breed of daredevil is taking on the eiger, not by climbing up the mountain, but by plunging down it. When we heard that after years of planning, a new kind of descent was about to be attempted, we went to Switzerland to see firsthand something no one had

ever tried before. At 13,000 feet, the icy summit of the Eiger is too steep and rocky to simply ski down. You ready? So J.T. Holmes is training in three extreme sports to rocket down more of the Eiger than anyone ever has. Right now, he's practicing one of those sports, speed riding, on a nearby mountain slope with his friend and cameraman, Valentin DeLoup. To speed ride, J. JT is using skis, but he's also attached to a glider-like parachute called a speed wing. It allows him to soar over rocks and ledges impossible to ski. You're capable of transitioning in and out of flight at will.

So you're both skiing and then you're flying. And then you're skiing a little bit more. Exactly. But speed riding will only take JT so far down the Eiger. He'll also ski off a cliff and then free fall the rest of the way, all in one long, nonstop, breathtaking ride. Three sports, one run. And they're my three favorite sports. These are the three things you love? Yeah, these are three of the things that I love. JT needs perfect conditions for this dangerous descent,

and so far he hasn't been lucky. Weather on the Eiger is unpredictable. Fierce winds whip the slopes and change direction dramatically JT checks the Eiger every day to see if he can finally head to the summit The past two years he's had to cancel plans because wind blew the snow off the top of the mountain Today the conditions are not right Well yeah today you can't even see the top of the Eiger So first of all you couldn't land a helicopter up there

How long have you been planning this? You know, first kind of thoughts of it were upwards of six years ago, but really focused on it for three. Why is it taking so long? You put your life, you know, in unnecessary risk. So I need the right day.

JT is well aware of the risk. He started out as a professional skier. The steeper the slope, the better. Ready, set, go! Now at 35, he makes a living through endorsements and filming his remarkable feats. When we first met him six years ago in Norway, he and his daredevil friends were pioneering the use of wingsuits, jumping off mountains and flying at more than

100 miles an hour. But in the last several years, a number of JT's friends and acquaintances have died in wingsuit accidents. Iliv Rude, who was flying with JT in Norway, was killed in 2012 when he struck a cliff and fell 1,000 feet. JT won't be wingsuit flying off the Eiger. The most dangerous part of his descent will be after he finishes speed riding when he tries to jettison his skis and free fall down the rest of the mountain. To practice, he makes base jumps without skis off a tiny, slippery piece of rock he calls the mushroom. I stepped off the helicopter onto the mushroom, and that was fine. I had good grip. But then I took another step, and there was this really thin ice layer. Yeah, it feels more uneven than I remember it. He's off.

He falls for about 20 seconds, accelerating to 110 miles an hour, before opening his parachute. He's straightening right toward us. The parachute's open. It's a white parachute. He's red. That was amazing. How was it? That's amazing. How was it? Scary. When JT jumps off the cliff on the Eiger, he'll have his skis on. Properly releasing them is critical. What's the danger if you can't get the skis off? You're at risk of an unstable parachute deployment or a snag. So the biggest danger is that the ski is going to get tangled up in the parachute?

That's the risk. That risk is foremost in his mind because of what happened to his best friend, Shane McConkie. In 2007, JT and Shane started skiing off mountains, dropping their skis, and flying away in wingsuits. It was a dangerous combination they found thrilling. Oh yeah, another wingsuit ski base. Here we go. But on this jump in Italy in 2009, Shane McConkie's ski release mechanism jammed. He couldn't get his skis to come off. He crashed into the ground at high speed and was killed instantly. That's how he died. His skis didn't come off.

He couldn't get his skis off, struggled in his wingsuit, and crashed. When JT is training at the Eiger, he wears a t-shirt with a funny picture of Shane on it. This Eiger descent. Without his old friend there to help him, he's turned to new friends. Martin Sherman is an experienced Swiss mountain guide. They can change very quickly, from good conditions to really nasty. It can turn bad very quickly. Oh yeah, and then you're in trouble. One wrong step and you can plunge off. You're gone. Morton and JT are cautious and methodical, making numerous trips of the Eiger to plan in advance every part of the complex descent, particularly this spot where JT will jump, jettison his skis,

and begin to free fall. You're standing there on the top of the mountain. What goes through your mind? There's two mindsets. You know, there's the Evel Knievel, which is kind of kamikaze, and who knows how it's going to work out, and will you hit the landing ramp or not? And then there's the James Bond. And Bond is composed and dialed, and he uses clever pieces of gear, which he developed with Q, to outwit his opponents and pull off tremendous things. Which one are you?

I'm Bond. After days of waiting and years of false starts and cancelled attempts, on this visit in April, the weather on the mountain suddenly clears. JT decides the time is right. He and his team take a chopper to the Eiger summit. I'm checking for landmarks on the way up and kind of confirming my line, my path of descent. So you already have a path of descent in your mind. It's something that's been memorized.

The Eiger may be a monster of a mountain, but up close, the summit is shockingly small. Here, there is no room for error, no room for the helicopter. It's not big enough for the helicopter to actually land. It does what we call a toe-in, where it just puts its nose into the Eiger and it just hovers there. How big is the area that you're standing on at the top? The top of the Eiger is pretty small. There is no flat spot. You know, workable space is three ping-pong tables.

Three ping-pong tables. Yeah. That's it. Something like that, yeah. A mistake here, one wrong step at 13,000 feet, could cost them their lives. JT and his team work for almost an hour. Wearing crampons on their ski boots, they dig trenches with ice axes so they won't fall down the nearly vertical slope. The surface is jagged ice, not powdery snow, and it can easily rip the speed wings.

I don't like how these things grab the lines. They file down the sharp pieces of ice so they won't snag the speed wing lines. But the wind kicks up, and they have to quickly reposition them. JT decides it's now or never. Okay, you good? Yeah. Okay, three, two, one, go. JT launches off the summit.

Champion speed rider Valentin Deleu quickly follows, videotaping for us with a camera on his helmet. The ride of a lifetime has begun. That's when you turn your skis downhill. Doing that, that's very committing because when you point your skis down the Eiger, you're probably not going to stop until the bottom. One way or the other? One way or the other. JT uses the Speedwing for much of the descent, flying over outcroppings of rock and icy slopes too steep to ski. He reaches an open slope on the Eiger's western flank and lands. He cuts loose his speed wing so it won't slow him down. Now he relies solely on his skis

and skill. It's black diamond skiing. You're in a really cool place where a few people have skied. Really what you're going to try to do is just gather as much speed as possible and just propel yourself off the cliff. The cliff he'll ski off is coming up fast. This is the most dangerous part of JT's descent. There is no stopping. He completes a double backflip to stabilize himself, releases his skis, then free falls. His nylon suit is aerodynamically designed, propelling him forward so he doesn't crash into any rock ledges. He falls nearly 2,000 feet, finally opening his parachute. he drifts safely to the ground landing more than a mile below the eiger's summit oh my god that was pretty intense, man. Nailed it. Nailed it.

Nailed it. I don't have words to describe how it felt to go and pull that off after so much time. And, you know, it's kind of a twisted style of having fun, but it was really fun. If you're too fast, it's a little just kind of scary. We assumed JT would call it a day after making it down the Eiger in one piece. But after catching his breath and repacking his equipment, he decides to head back to the summit and do the whole run down the mountain once again. His speed ride off the summit goes perfectly. He flies over trouble spots and builds up speed as he approaches the cliff edge. But when he tries to release his skis, one of them won't come off.

This is what killed his best friend Shane McConkie. JT struggles for several agonizing seconds, then finally manages to drop the ski. It's a close call, but it doesn't seem to stop him from enjoying the rest of the ride. Could you give it up? I believe that I could, because I don't feel that I'm addicted to this sort of type of thing, this adrenaline or this sort of high-risk activity. You're not an adrenaline junkie, you don't think? Absolutely not. I prefer adrenaline enthusiasts.

I truly believe that I don't have to do this, and I truly believe that I enjoy doing this. That's pretty clear. And, you know, the day will come when I tone it down significantly. But that day's not here yet. It's not today. How'd they get those pictures? Go to 60minutesovertime.com.

Now an update on a story that we called the future of money. Leslie Stahl reported how Kenya is using a mobile phone-based system that allows people to send and receive cash. Pig farmer Stephen Huaynena Huajweru brought solar power to his farm, making 40 cents a day installments with his phone. Many viewers offered to pay Stephen's debt, but instead the solar power company has forgiven what the farmer owed. Something else to be thankful for this weekend. I'm Scott Pelley. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes. The first season of Georgie and Mandy is a bona fide hit.

Be cool, okay? We don't say it out loud. Okay. Can we just say it's great? Thank you for saying that, Elway. With lots and lots of laughs. So everybody knows? I only told Mandy. Well, I only told Mom and Dad. That's everybody. So quick summary. Laugh at Georgie and Mandy's first marriage with all episodes now streaming on Paramount Plus and returning new CBS Fall. Yes, yes, also yes.