60 Minutes - 1/18/2015: Whitey Bulger, Rescue, Volcano

Episode Date: February 26, 2015

FBI agents tell Steve Kroft about their 16-year search and eventual capture of Boston mobster Whitey Bulger, once No. 1 on the Most Wanted list. Also, Lesley Stahl has the untold story of a young, American banker's 1975 return to Vietnam to save his stranded Vietnamese colleagues and their families. Finally, volcanoes are found all over the world and many could spew lava and mass destruction -- we just don't know when; Scott Pelley reports. 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

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. 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. That's the apartment. That corner on the third floor.

The apartment belonged to Boston mobster and longtime fugitive Whitey Bulger, then the most wanted man in America. Bulger eluded the FBI for 14 years by hiding in plain sight in Santa Monica, California. Tonight, you'll hear from the agents who finally caught him with some help from an alley cat and his girlfriend's breast implants. We just rushed him. He guns out, FBI, don't move. I asked him to identify himself, and that didn't go over well. He asked me to F-in identify myself, and I asked him, I said, are you Whitey Bulger? He said yes.

It's a story that's never been told. There were 105 in all who John Reardon, risking his own life, rescued in the last days of the Vietnam War. Even now, four decades later, when they see him, you know, they know, he's the reason they're alive. And they call him Papa. How many children do you actually have now, and grandchildren? I just keep using the number 105, but the grandchildren, don't ask me, I can't keep up with that. Wow. keep using the number 105 but the grandchildren don't ask me i i can't keep up with that wow that is astounding oh look at that oh my god incredible what a sight looking right into the crater there are 1500 1,500 active volcanoes, and tonight we want to tell you about three.

One that caused the most recent mass disruption, another that's the biggest threat to a major city, and a third in the United States that could wreak havoc all around the world. I'm Steve Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Morley Safer. I'm Bob Simon. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Scott Pelley.

Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. Charlie and Carol Gasco were an elderly couple who moved to Santa Monica, California sometime in early 1997 to begin a new phase of their life. For the next 14 years, they did almost nothing that was memorable. And as we first reported last season, they would be of absolutely no interest if it weren't for the fact that Charlie Gasco turned out to be James Whitey Bulger, the notorious Boston gangster and longtime fugitive who is now serving two lifetime sentences. Carol Gascoe was actually Catherine Gregg, Whitey's longtime girlfriend and caregiver. The story of how they managed to elude an

international manhunt for so long while hiding in plain sight is interesting, and tonight you'll hear it from the Gasco's neighbors and from the federal agents who finally unraveled the case with the help of a boob job and an alley cat. If you're forced into retirement with a comfortable nest egg and a desire to be left completely alone, there is no better place than Santa Monica, California. This low-key seaside suburb of L.A. is shared by transients and tourists, hippies and hedonists, celebrities, and lots of senior citizens attracted to the climate and an abundance of inexpensive rent-controlled apartments just a few blocks from the ocean.

Places like the Princess Eugenia on 3rd Street, which is where Charlie and Carol Gasco, a childless couple from Chicago, lived for 14 years without attracting much attention from longtime neighbors or landlords. Josh Bond is the building manager. What were they like? They were like the nice, retired old couple that lived in the apartment next to me. Good tenants? Excellent tenants. Never complained. Always paid rent on time.

In cash? In cash. Janice Goodwin lived down the hall. They had nothing, and they never went out. They never had food delivered. She never dressed nicely. You thought they were poor? Yes, without a doubt. The one thing everyone remembers about the Gascos is that they loved animals

and always made a fuss over the ones in the neighborhood. Barbara Gluck remembers that Carol Gasko always fed a stray cat after its owner had died. She would, you know, pet it and be sweet to it. And then she would put a plate of food, like, out here. And she liked the cat. Obviously. She loved the cat. And we all liked the cat, but she was taking care of the cat.

And what about Charlie Gascon? You know, he always had a hat on and dark glasses. I have to say, it was mysterious to me why a lovely woman like that was hanging out with that guy, that old grumpy man. I never could figure that one out. Until I heard they had $800,000-something in the wall. And then I went, oh, okay. Money wasn't the only thing found in the Gasco's apartment on June 22, 2011, when the FBI stopped by and ended what it called the most extensive manhunt in the Bureau's history. Weapons all over the apartment. I mean, weapons by his nightstand, weapons under the

windowsill, shotguns, mini Ruger's, rifles. Loaded. Loaded, ready to go. What had started out as a routine day for Special Agent Scott Gariola, who was in charge of hunting fugitives in LA, would turn into one of the most interesting days of his career. After getting a call to stake out a building in Santa Monica, he notified his backup team with the LAPD. I had four guys working that day, and they said, we've got a tip on Whitey Bulger, and I'll see you there in about an hour. And invariably, the text would return, who's Whitey Bulger?

Really? A few of them. I had to remind them, gently remind them who's Whitey Bulger? Really? A few of them. I'd remind him, gently remind him who Whitey Bulger was. That he was number one on the FBI's most wanted list. Number one. Number one, yeah. Big East Coast figure, but on the West Coast, not so much. Imagine any cartel leader... The cops in L.A. were focused on gangbangers and cartel members, not some retired Irish mobster who hadn't been spotted in 16 years. But then few

mobsters have ever been as infamous in the city as Whitey Bulger was in Boston, and his reputation was for more than just being grumpy. Besides extortion and flooding the city with cocaine, Bulger routinely performed or ordered executions, some at close range, some with a hail of bullets, and at least one by strangulation, after which it's said he took a nap. Special Agent Rich Tehan, who ran the FBI's Whitey Bulger Fugitive Task Force, had heard it all. Bulger was charged with 19 counts of murder. He was charged with other crimes. He was a scourge to the society in South Boston, his own community. He was also a scourge to the FBI and a great source of embarrassment to Tehan, Special Agent Phil Torsney, and others on the FBI task force.

Years earlier, Whitey Bulger had infiltrated the Boston office of the FBI and bought off agents who protected him and plied him with information, including the tip that allowed Bulger to flee just days before he was to be indicted. We really had to catch this guy to establish credibility after all the other issues, and it was just a matter of bringing this guy back to Boston to make sure this guy didn't die or get away with this thing. Toursney, who's now retired, and agent Tommy McDonald joined the task force in 2009. The joke was Bulger was on the FBI's least wanted list. There hadn't been a credible lead in more than a decade,

and their efforts in Bulger's old neighborhood of South Boston were met with mistrust and ridicule. Some people, they told us right out front, you guys aren't looking for that guy. People just made the assumption we had him stashed somewhere. I mean, people really thought that kind of thing. Despite that mindset that we're not going to help you, the FBI still got it done. Took 16 years. Took 16 years. Yeah, this was not a typical fugitive. The FBI says Bulger had planned his getaway years in advance, with money set aside and a fake identity for a Thomas Baxter. During his first two years on the lam, Bulger was in touch with friends and family,

shuttling between New York, Chicago, and the resort town of Grand Isle, Louisiana, where he rented a home until his identity was compromised. After that, it seemed as if Bulger had disappeared from the face of the earth, except for the alleged sightings all over the world. How many of these tips do you think might have been true? Boy, there was thousands and thousands of tips, and I think, I don't think any of them are true. One of the obstacles was there were really no good photographs of Bulger

or his longtime live-in girlfriend, Catherine Gregg, a former dental hygienist. The FBI often noted that the couple shared a love of animals, especially dogs and cats, and asked veterinarians to be on the lookout. There were reports that Gregg once had breast implants and other plastic surgery in Boston, so the task force reached out to physicians. Eventually, they got a call from a Dr. Matthias Donnellan, who had located her files in storage. I was trying to leave the office a little early to catch one of my kids' ball games, and I said, well, listen, I'm going to swing by in the morning and pick those up. And they said to me, do you want the photos, too? And I said, you have photos? And they said, yeah, we have photos. I said, we'll be there in 15 minutes. The breast implant lead produced a

treasure trove of high resolution Catherine Gregg photographs that would help crack the case. The FBI decided to switch strategies, going after the girlfriend in order to catch the gangster. This is an announcement by the FBI. The FBI created this public service announcement. 60-year-old Grieg is the girlfriend of 81-year-old Bulger. It ran in 14 markets on daytime talk shows aimed at women. Call the tip line at 1-800-CALL-FBI. And it didn't take long. The very next morning, the Bulger task force got three messages

from someone that used to live in Santa Monica and was 100% certain that Charlie and Carol Gasco, apartment 303 at the Princess Eugenia Apartments, were the people they were looking for. The descriptions and the age difference matched, and Deputy U.S. Marshal Neil Sullivan, who handled the lead, said there was another piece of tantalizing information. The tipster specifically described that they were caring for this cat and their love for this cat. So that was just one piece of the puzzle and the tip that just added up to saying, if this isn't them, it's something we better check out immediately because it sure sounds like them. A search of the FBI's computer database for the Gascos raised another red flag,

not for what it found, but for what it didn't. Basically, like they were ghosts. No driver's license. Exactly. No driver's license, no California ID, like they didn't exist. That's the apartment. That corner on the third floor. On the right-hand side? Yep. By early afternoon, FBI agent Scott Gariola had set up a number of surveillance posts and had already met with apartment manager Josh Bond to talk about his tenants. He closed the door, threw down a folder and opened it up and said, are these the people that live in apartment 303? Did you say anything when you saw the pictures?

My initial reaction was, holy s**t. You're living next door to a gangster. I still didn't really know who he was. But it didn't take him long to figure it out. While the FBI was mulling its options, Bond logged on to Bulger's Wikipedia page. I'm kind of scrolling down. It's like, oh, wow, this guy's serious. It's like murders and extortion.

And then I get to the bottom, and there's this thing. It's like from one of his old people saying, well, the last time I saw him, he said, you know, when he goes out, he's going to have guns and he's going to be ready to take people with him. I was like, ooh, maybe I shouldn't be involved in this. I mean, we were sitting here laughing about it, but he's a pretty serious guy. Yeah, yeah. He killed a lot of people. True. Or had them killed.

I didn't know that at the time. Bond told the FBI he wasn't going to knock on the Gasco's door because there was a note posted expressly asking people not to bother them. Carroll had told neighbors that Charlie was showing signs of dementia. So we were back there. So Garriola devised a ruse involving the Gasco's storage locker in the garage. It had the name Gasco across across it, and apartment 303. He had the manager called to tell them that their locker had been broken into, and that he needed someone to come down to see if anything was missing. Carol Gascoe said her husband would be right down. We just rushed him. He mean, guns out,

FBI, don't move. Gave the words, hey, FBI, get your hands up. Hands went up right away, and then at that moment, we told him to get down on his knees, and he gave us, yeah, he gave us a, I ain't getting down on my effing knees. Didn't want to get his pants dirty. Didn't want to get his pants dirty. Wearing white and seeing the oil on the ground, I guess he didn't want to get down in oil. Even at 81, this was a man used to being in control. I asked him to identify himself, and that didn't go over well. He asked me to F-ing identify myself, which I did.

And I asked him, I said, are you Whitey Bulger? He said yes. Just about that moment, someone catches my attention from a few feet away by the elevator shaft. It was Janice Goodwin from the third floor coming to do her laundry. And I said, excuse me, I think I can help you. This man has dementia, so if he's acting oddly, you know, that could be why. Immediately what flashed through my mind is, oh, my God,

I just arrested an 81-year-old man with Alzheimer's who thinks he's Whitey Bulger. What is he going to tell me next? He's Elvis? So I said, do me a favor. I said, this woman over here says you have a touch of Alzheimer's. He said, don't listen to her. She's effing nuts. He says, I'm James Bulger. A few minutes later, he confirmed it, signing a consent form allowing the FBI to search his apartment.

As he's signing, he says, that's the first time I've signed that name in a long time. Was there a feeling of resignation? I don't think he had it. I did ask him. I said, hey, Whitey, aren't you relieved that you don't have to look over your shoulder anymore and it's come to an end? And he said, are you nuts? But in some ways, Whitey Bulger and Catherine Gregg had already been prisoners in apartment 303, which appeared to be a mixture of the murderous and the mundane. Alongside the weapons and all the money,

they had stockpiled a lifetime supply of cleansers, creams, and detergents. The FBI took special interest in a collection of 64-ounce bottles with white socks stretched over the top. I said, hey, Whitey, what are these? Are these some kind of Molotov cocktail you're making? He goes, no. I said, I buy tube socks from the 99-cent store, and they're too tight on my calves, so I stretch them out. I said, why are you shopping at the 99-cent store? You have half a million dollars under your bed. He goes, I had to make the money last.

It's been said that one of the reasons it took so long to catch Whitey Bulger is that people were looking for a gangster, and Bulger, whether he liked it or not, had ceased to be one. He said it was hard to keep up that mindset of a criminal, and that's part of the reason he came down to that garage. He said if he was on his game, you know, 15, 20, 30 years ago, he probably would have sensed something there. But he said it was hard to stay on that edge, that criminal edge, after being on the lam as a regular citizen for 15 years.

The master manipulator gave credit to Catherine Gregg for keeping him crime-free, hoping it would mitigate her sentence. She's now serving eight years for harboring a fugitive. On the long plane ride back to Boston, Bulger told his captors that he became obsessed with not getting caught and would do anything to avoid it, even if it meant obeying the law. Whitey Bulger's biggest fear, they said, was being discovered dead in his apartment, and he had a plan to avoid it. If he became ill and knew he was on his deathbed, he'd go down Arizona, crawl down the bottom of one of these mines and die and decompose and hope that we would never find him and still be looking for him forever. 60 Minutes, coming up after this short break.

From commutes that become learning sessions to dishwashing filled with laughs, podcasts can help you make the most out of your everyday. And when it comes to everyday spending, you can count on the PC Insider's World Elite MasterCard to help you earn the most PC Optimum points everywhere you shop. The PC Insider's World Elite MasterCard. The card for living unlimited. Conditions apply to all benefits.

Visit pcfinancial.ca for details. 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.

You've heard of the brave and ingenious rescue of Jews from the Nazis by Oskar Schindler, and the courageous and unlikely rescue of the American hostages from Iran depicted in the movie Argo. But until we first reported it back in October of 2013, very few people had heard about the daring and dangerous rescue of the Vietnamese from Saigon by John Reardon. It happened nearly 40 years ago, at the very end of the Vietnam War, when everyone was trying to escape the communist incursion. No one was paying any attention to an unassuming American banker who had already been evacuated, going back in to save his stranded Vietnamese colleagues and their families. You got everybody, everybody who worked at the bank, spouses and children. Right.

There were 105 in all who John Reardon, risking his own life, rescued in the last days of the war. Even now, four decades later, when they see him, you know they know he's the reason they're alive. Today, they're leading prosperous lives as American citizens with children who are doctors and lawyers and with grandchildren. Isabel, do you know my name? John Reardon.

John Reardon. You know my last name. That's more than I know. John Reardon was as far from Rambo and Mission Impossible as you could get. Back in 1975, he was a young banker, handsome and unattached, working as the assistant manager of Citibank in Saigon. They gave you a villa. They gave me a villa. And you lived well. I lived well, yes.

He hosted barbecues at the villa for the bank's 34 Vietnamese employees. Tellers, secretaries, accountants, they were like a family, tying their future to American banking. But that April, communist tanks were barreling toward Saigon. Hundreds of thousands were leaving or trying to. Three weeks before Saigon fell, John got an order from Citibank in New York, burn everything important and get out. They said, John, we've chartered a 747 Pan Am that's coming in, and we want you to take all of your staff and leave the bank and get out to this plane.

By this point, it dawns on you what would happen to those people if you didn't get them out? Some of them would be killed. It's scary. It was very scary. Cook Pham Vo worked in personnel. Chi Vu was the head teller. They were hearing rumors of reprisals by the Viet Cong against anyone working for the Americans.

Would you have been seen as traitors, as spies? The closer you to American, the more they think you spy. But their own government set up checkpoints to keep people from leaving the country. Without exit papers, the staff had no way to escape. John didn't want to leave without them, but the bank ordered him out. So he boarded that Pan Am flight to Hong Kong alone, and the employees were left to fend for themselves. Did you feel abandoned? Yes. Did John say anything to you when he left? I was crying so much. I was worried about my kids, my husband. And he said, no worry,

I'll be there for you. John and his bosses at Citibank spent day and night in Hong Kong cooking up rescue plans. They tried to send in helicopters, even an oil tanker. And they asked the U.S. government to help, all in vain. I felt we had all those people back in there, and they were counting on us. And many, many times in the conversations we had with them, they said to us, don't let us down. Please do everything you can. Come on, Jens, let's move it. But after two weeks of trying, Citibank said enough. A manager told the Hong Kong team, if you try some daring rescue mission, you're fired.

That night, John's immediate boss, Mike McTighe, a former Marine, asked John to dinner. And just as my steak arrived, and I was picking up my knife and fork, and he's making small talk all, and then suddenly he says, you know, John, one of us asked to go back. And I put down my knife and fork and pushed that stake back, and I could feel tears coming out of my eyes. And he said, would you go back? Go back, even though it meant losing his job, possibly losing his life. And yet, 11 days before Saigon would fall, the mild-mannered banker defied his bank and,

better judgment, caught the very last commercial flight into Saigon and walked into the branch. And everybody comes running around me and said, what do we do? What do we do? How are we going to get out of here and everything? But you're there under the authority of who? You're not working for Citibank any. No one. No one. I'm on my own. You're there under the authority of who? You're not working for Citibank? No one. No one. I'm on my own.

On his own authority, John moved them with their families, all 105 of them, into his villa and another one nearby so they'd all be ready to go as a group when and if he came up with a plan. He told them to tell no one where they were. Four days went by. Nothing was working until a CIA agent told him the only way out now is on U.S. military cargo planes that are evacuating Americans and their dependents.

He says, the evacuation has begun. Take your family and go out to the airport and process them through. And I said, well, I don't have a family. And he said, just create a wife and children, no matter who they are, and go out there and sign the documents. And this is the first time you've heard this idea? Yes, yes. Try and pass off his Vietnamese colleagues, their spouses, and children as his family? There were 105 of them.

Do you say to him, are you kidding me? You don't say cockamamie? No, no. Because there'd been so much cockamania before that. This is the time to jump on anything that looked like it was going to float. You were at the end of your rope. Yes, absolutely. It was worth a try, but not for all of them at once.

He took the bank van and went out to the airfield alone to see if it would work. I walked into that processing area, and somebody gave me a piece of paper. He said, list your dependents on here. And I was fumbling for what piece of paper I was going to have to write this all down. They said, just attach that to this piece of paper and keep going. So it was a bit

of a rush. There were 15 names. You had a wife and 14 names. Right. That was kind of ambitious. Daughter, son, daughter, son. Yeah. This is the paper. Wife, daughter, daughter, son, 14 kids, some older than he was. He was certifying on a U.S. government document that these were his children. Is your heart pounding? Are you... Yes, a little bit. I certainly was nervous, yes.

He was stunned when the officer, no questions asked, stamped it and handed John evacuation tags. He rushed to the villa to pick the 15 up, amazed that such a crazy idea was actually working. Do you remember when he came back? What happened? We're so happy and elation to see he's a lifesaver. He's an angel. But you had to keep it secret, right? Yes. You never told your parents? No. So you never said goodbye? No. Over the next four days, as fear gripped the city, John repeated this ruse, going back and forth to the airport ten times, filling out papers with groups of six or eight.

Did any of these officers ever question you in all this time? This one man, he said, haven't I seen you here before? I said, no, sir, absolutely not. Bang! I know he wanted to get going, too. And then another time, this man said, well, you've got one heck of a big family here, haven't you been busy?

I said, oh, yes, I've been here a long time. And just chopped it again. So Bill just went back and back and back. Hard to believe it would be that simple to do. We recently met with seven of his daughters. They didn't think it was all that simple, since John was separating them from their husbands. All the staff, women, will go first,

and the husband will leave in a separate group. At that moment, you know, I was like thinking, will I ever meet, see my husband again? Getting the husbands out was the most dangerous. Yes, because, you know, they were either in the army or working for the government. And if the MP, they saw anybody like that or they caught anybody like that, they would shoot right away. John was able to get the husband's fake adoption papers as his son's and managed to get some of them on what he thought was safe, a U.S. embassy

evacuation bus like this one to the airport. But the bus was stopped by police looking for deserters. The driver of the bus stopped at the checkpoint, opened the door, and a Vietnamese police officer stepped onto the bus. And he looked up and down the aisle, and I thought, this is it. We're all going to be taken off this bus and shot. But in a split second, a woman sitting in the front seat, a Vietnamese woman, leaped up toward the policeman and poked her hands into his stomach. I thought she knifed him. And then I saw a bag of something move from her hands to his hands. And I thought, it's a bribe. Bag of money. Bag of money, yes. The bribe worked. He waved them through. The last group of men at the villa were afraid to risk another bus, but John was out of ideas. Finally, one of the men thought up an ingenious plan.

They pretended they were delivering bundles of money to the airport in the bank van. They even called the police for an escort like this. And they had rifles and everything and they just led us right through the gates of the airport. You just went right on the plane with these guys? Right. They were safe. All of them? All of them. One of them was Chi's husband.

Every time I ask you about John you cry. He's so kind. You know, to stay behind and took us out. He did so much for us. He saved my kids and my husband. They flew on one of the last planes out of Saigon. After that, the only route of escape

were the helicopters at the U.S. Embassy. Within a few days, North Vietnamese tanks rolled into the presidential palace. The war was over. What followed were years of starvation and brutal repression. Many who tried to escape by boat drowned at sea. But thanks to John, the Citibank employees were flown out to either Guam or the Philippines

and then all reunited at Camp Pendleton in California. Do you think all this time you've been fired? Yeah, I do still think that. I'm not worried about it, though. I'm still alive. They I'm not worried about it, though. I'm still alive. They're all alive. Important things. While he wasn't fired, he was given a big bonus and hailed as a hero. At the reunion for John in Long Island with a group of his children, we found out they call him Papa. Hi, John.

Nice to see you. Yes, I do. I haven't talked to you in so long. Citibank spent a million dollars to resettle all the employees, giving them and many of the spouses jobs. We'll never forget you two. At the time in Saigon, he thought of his colleagues at the bank as his Vietnamese family. Forty years later, still his family, but now as American as... Do you think the people who came here have had good lives? Yes, I do. How many children do you actually have now and grandchildren? I just keep using the number 105, but the grandchildren don't ask me. I can't keep up with that.

60 Minutes, coming up after this short break. Wendy's most important deal of the day has a fresh lineup. Pick any two breakfast items for $4. New four-piece French toast sticks, bacon or sausage wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small hot coffee, and more. Limited time only at participating Wendy's Taxes Extra. If you think we're living in an unstable world, just listen to this. Only 1% of our Earth is solid rock. Most of the other 99% is an oozing mass churning beneath our feet like road tar at temperatures between 2,000 and 10,000 degrees. The Earth's crust is only 20 miles thick, and when that cracks, one of the greatest forces

in nature erupts. There are 1,500 active volcanoes, and last year we told you about three. One that caused the most recent mass disruption, another that's the biggest threat to a major city, and a third in the United States that could wreak havoc all around the world. The first, the disruptive volcano, has a name as long and as hard as the trouble it caused. Eyjafjallajökull means island mountain glacier in the inscrutable language of Iceland. When it blew in 2010, we started shooting this story. And we came to the right place. Over the last 500 years, Iceland's 30 volcanoes have released one-third of all of the lava on Earth. We put together an expedition to be the first to reach the summit after the eruption.

The volcanic landscape covered in ice isn't hospitable to life or convoys, for that matter. The man in front of the truck is pointing out cracks in the glacier that would swallow us whole. We covered miles of forbidding terrain at walking speed. We're almost at the highest point. When the trucks could go no further, we hiked with our guide, one of the world's leading authorities on volcanoes, Haraldur Sigurdsson. Wow, that is astounding. Oh, look at that.

Oh, my God. Incredible. What a sight. I'm looking right into a crater. Scientists rate volcanic eruptions on a scale of zero to eight. This is a four, which they call cataclysmic. Tell me what you're seeing. It's an explosive eruption, and explosions are producing big clouds of ash

that are moving up, straight up into the atmosphere at a velocity of a few hundred feet per second and throwing out huge rocks. How big are these pieces that we see flying? Some of these are the size of cars. And how high are they going up? Must be a thousand feet. Oh, at least a thousand feet. But they're still red hot.

They're maybe 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. What's causing these stupendous explosions that we're hearing well the big booms that we're hearing are huge gas bubbles in the magma that are popping open they may be a hundred feet in diameter and when they get closer to the surface they the pressure inside these gas bubbles is so great that they blow off the magma that is ahead of them and then they release the gas, and that's a big sonic boom. Look at the Earth just erupting up into the sky. Unbelievable.

This is a great place to explain exactly where volcanoes happen on the Earth. The crust of the Earth, of course, is fractured like a broken mirror, and it's fractured into about 15 major plates called tectonic plates. Volcanoes happen all around the edges where the earth's crust is fractured. And here in Iceland, a major line runs right through the middle of the island, and the two plates are breaking apart. And that's exactly what you see happening behind me. No, no, you don't see anything happening behind you. What ruined our view was steam. It was exploding everywhere that the lava hit the ice. The ancient glacier was melting in a flash flood, carving canyons into the mountain.

The thermal shock also lofted a fine black ash that covered farms for miles. They call it ash, but it really feels like sand. In Iceland, volunteers come out from the cities to help farmers dig out. These were bankers who brought their shovels from the capital, Reykjavik. It was this ash that made Eyjafjallajökull the most disruptive eruption in years. The ash billowed up nearly 33,000 feet and drifted a thousand miles over Europe. 100,000 flights were cancelled. Ten million people were stranded for a week. Still, volcanologist Haraldur Sigurdsson told us that kind of trouble is nothing compared to eruptions elsewhere in the recent past.

Haraldur Sigurdsson, Volcano Scientist, The best example of that occurred in 1815, when there was an eruption in Tambora volcano in Indonesia, a big explosive eruption sent out an ash cloud up to about 30 miles, and it dispersed very widely, and also a lot of sulfur came out of this volcano, and that led to global cooling, and produced what is known as the year without a summer in New England, in North America. The year without a summer? The year without a summer in 1816. Because of this one volcanic eruption?

On the other side of the earth. And that type of event will occur again. That eruption also led to big migrations out of Central Europe into Russia and great disturbances worldwide. Which volcano on earth would you say is most dangerous to people? It's the volcano where there's a very large population adjacent to it and on it, and that's Vesuvius in Italy. Vesuvius is our second stop, and you might think that if anyone knew better than to live by a volcano, it would be the people around the most infamous mountain of all time.

But today in southern Italy, a metropolis spreads within striking distance of Vesuvius. Nobody wants to believe that the area that they live in could kill them. We went for a look up close with American volcanologist Mike Sheridan. We flew over the cinder cone on the helicopters of the Guardia di Finanza, a police force that helps keep watch over the mountain. Vesuvius is Sheridan's life's work, and he has warned the government that it can't count on evacuating the number of people in harm's way. And what is that number?

Well, it depends on the type of explosion. If there's one like the last big eruption that occurred in 1631, there would be about 600,000 people. But if it is an eruption like the 2,000-year-ago eruption that destroyed Pompeii, the number could be up to 3.5 million. Pompeii, as it was August 24, 79 AD, the moment it was preserved under more than 10 feet of ash and rock. The boulevards, the homes, the mosaics are the volcano's contribution to history. Around here, they do a lively business in the dead. Citizens of Pompeii are frozen in timeless agony. About 16,000 were killed, sculpted where they fell. Scientists have a good idea of what these people saw after studying the evidence of

what remains. Witnesses describe the mountain rumbling for days before it launched a column of ash and rock 12 miles high, which fell back as hell on earth. The wind came shooting down the sides of the mountain at more than 200 miles an hour. The air temperature was about 900 degrees, and the ash that fell throughout the region

left this part of Italy uninhabitable for 300 years. Today, from this control room, volcanologist Giuseppe Mastro Lorenzo monitors the instruments that will provide Italy's early warning. He showed us those three and a half million people that crowd all around the cinder cone of the mountain. One day, it may be up to him to sound the alarm. How much time will you have? Probably just a few days. We can just hope that we will have weeks or months, but we cannot make a contract with the volcano. So your friends say, look, it hasn't erupted in hundreds of years, and you must say, that's the problem. That's the problem.

I'm trying to convince the people that this quiet mountain can be a killer. At the base of the quiet mountain, the peaceful piazza of Torre del Greco is wiped out on average about once every 100 years, give or take. The bell tower survived the eruption of 1794, and today old men rest their feet on rock-solid evidence of what's coming next. Michael Sheridan told us that Vesuvius has a very long life ahead of it. This pattern is complex. It has different personalities. And the last personality was rather benign, but it's got some mean personalities down there that we don't want to experience in our lifetime. There are bigger personalities among volcanoes, which scientists call supervolcanoes. Remember our eruption in Iceland was a four on a scale of eight?

Well an eight would change life on Earth. Haraldur Sigurdsson told us there is a name for one of the places where that is likely to happen. It's called Yellowstone National Park, our third volcano. Old Faithful is here for a reason. In the northwest corner of Wyoming, the caldera is about 50 miles wide, so big that you can't see it from the ground. Below is what science calls a hot spot, where a vast plume of magma has pushed into the crust. The floor of the volcano is breathing like an animal. It's rising and moving up and down because of magma inside the volcano.

What's the history of eruption of the hot spot in Yellowstone? The last eruption was about 400,000 years ago, the last big one. That was a devastating explosive eruption. The Yellowstone size eruption will occur. Of course, we have no idea when. It's being monitored very, very closely, so there's no chance of it occurring without any warning. But it's a devastating event. Devastating to aviation, communications, and agriculture, volcanoes can change the course of history.

Never before have so many people lived within striking distance, 200 million worldwide. Science is good at warning of eruptions that are weeks away, but beyond that, it's impossible to predict which one is next or how big it will be. I'm Scott Pelley. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.