60 Minutes - 12/22/2024: The Pager Plot, The Iron River, Joy to the World

Episode Date: December 23, 2024

For the first time, ex-Mossad agents who led the exploding pager and walkie-talkie plot against Hezbollah, which garnered worldwide attention in September, detail their 10-year undercover op in an interview with correspondent Lesley Stahl. Meeting in Israel, the agents, who recently retired from service, share never-before-known details that caught Hezbollah fighters by surprise and ultimately spurred change across the region from Lebanon to Syria to Iran. With an estimated 200,000 to half a million U.S. firearms smuggled into Mexico each year through what's known as "the Iron River," correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi reports on Mexico’s legal battle against American gun manufacturers and dealers and the efforts to curb gun trafficking to the cartels. At 25, jazz vocalist Samara Joy is already making her mark in a genre that was last popular over fifty years ago. With a powerful voice heralded as a once-in-a-generation talent, correspondent Bill Whitaker caught up with Joy on her Christmas tour where she was joined by her family, a gospel dynasty. “60 Minutes” has a front row seat as Grammy-winner Samara Joy puts her own spin on the jazz classics. 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

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sophisticated deceptions in the history of counterintelligence, the pager plot. People with this pager got a message that said, you have an encrypted message. In order to access it, you have to push the two buttons, meaning that it would explode in their hands. That was the whole point. If you think fentanyl overdoses are a problem, if you think migration across the border is a problem, if you think the spread of organized crime is a problem in the United States,

then you should care about stopping the crime gun pipeline to Mexico. You need to stop it at its source, because all those problems are driven by the supply of U.S. guns to the cartels. This holiday season, we thought the world could use a little joy. Jazz singer Samara Joy. You I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper.

I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes. Why do fintechs like Float choose Visa? As a more trusted, more secure payments network, Visa provides scale, expertise, and innovative payment solutions. Learn more at Visa.ca slash fintech.

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deliver. On September 17th, after Israel and the terrorist organization Hezbollah had been in an escalating war for nearly a year, the Israeli spy agency Mossad launched one of the most daring and sophisticated deceptions in the history of counterintelligence, the Pager Plot, a modern take on the Trojan horse. Mossad created a bomb in a pocket and tricked Hezbollah fighters into unwittingly wearing these devices on their bodies. The repercussions of the plot have been dramatic, including aiding in the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, the weakening of Iran, and the decimating of the target of the plot, Hezbollah. We spoke with two recently retired senior Mossad agents with leading roles in the operation. To hide their identities, we agreed they could wear a mask and have their voices altered.

We started with Michael, not his real name. You were something called a case officer. What exactly is a case officer? A case officer spearheads the operation. He is the commander of the operation. The operation started 10 years ago, not with pagers, but with weaponizing walkie-talkies. A walkie-talkie was a weapon,

just like a bullet or a missile or a mortar. So a walkie-talkies. A walkie-talkie was a weapon, just like a bullet or a missile or a mortar. So a walkie-talkie bomb. A walkie-talkie bomb. Inside the battery, there is an explosive device. And that was the invention, to put an explosive device that couldn't be detected into the battery. Correct. Made in Israel.

At Mossad? Yes. As I understand it, these walkie-talkies went into a tactical vest that a soldier would put on, and then this would go in the pocket. Correct. Near the heart. Yes. So Israel sold this device to Hezbollah.

Hezbollah paid for this weapon that was to be used against them. They got a good price. A good price that couldn't be too low or they'd be suspicious. In the end, Hezbollah bought over 16,000 of these exploding walkie-talkies that Israel then didn't activate for 10 years until three months ago. How did you convince Hezbollah to buy this? Well, obviously, they didn't know that they were buying it from Israel. Who did they buy it from or think they were buying it from?

We have an incredible array of possibilities of creating foreign companies that have no way of being traced back to Israel, shell companies over shell companies who affect the supply chain to our favor. We create a pretend world. We are a global production company. We write the screenplay. We're the directors. We're the producers.

We're the main actors. The world is our stage. This is Mossad's old office. Its motto from Proverbs 24.6 says in so many words, This is Mossad's old office. Its motto from Proverbs 24.6 says in so many words, wage war through deception and trickery. Kind of like the CIA's smoke and mirrors, which is what this operation was all about, starting with those walkie-talkies.

But walkie-talkies are only worn in battle. So Mossad began developing a new device that Hezbollah fighters would have in their pockets all the time. A pager. A pager is almost obsolete around the world, but Hezbollah still using it. This is Gabriel, not his real name or voice. In 2022, he and his team started developing the second phase of the operation, the booby-trapped pagers. He found out that Hezbollah was buying pagers from this company in Taiwan called Gold Apollo. This is the pager that Hezbollah was using. So it's very sleek, it's very shiny, and it certainly can fit in a pocket. So what did you do to change this to make it into a bomb?

So to make it into a bomb, we have to enlarge it a little bit. In order to put explosives inside, but not too much. Using dummies, Mossad conducted tests with the pager in a padded glove to calibrate the grams of explosive needed to be just enough to hurt the fighter, but not the person next to him, he's the only one that's going to be harmed. Did you test for that? Yes. We test everything triple, double, multiple times in order to make sure there's minimum damage. Could you use it as a tracking device? Did it have intelligence capability?

Oh, no. This is a very stupid device by nature. This is the reason they're using it. There's almost no way how to tap it. It's only receiving messages and several grams of explosive. Mossad also tested these ringtones to find a sound urgent enough to compel someone to take it out of their pocket. And they tested how long it takes a person to answer a pager. On average, seven seconds. But how to convince Hezbollah to switch to this bulkier pager? I remember the day that I came to our director, put it on the table, and he

was furious. He was telling us, there is no chance that anyone will buy such a big device. It's not comfortable in their pockets. It's heavy. Very heavy. Very heavy. It's no good. Yeah. Go back and bring me something else. It took me two weeks to convince him that although it's ugly, it has character. Character meaning added features, which they touted in fake ads on YouTube. Robust, dustproof, waterproof, long battery life. We make advertising movies and brochures, and we put it on the internet. And it became the best product in the Bipper area in the world. Did people other than Hezbollah want to buy this based on what was being said about it online?

Yes, we received several requests from regular potential customers. Obviously, we didn't send to anyone. We just bought them with expensive price. Mossad wanted to use the name Gold Apollo on its pager. So it set up shell companies, including one in this building in Hungary, to dupe the Taiwanese into partnering with them. So the company in Taiwan, Gold Apollo, did they know that they were working with people from Mossad? Gold Apollo had zero clue that they are working with the Mossad. And neither did Hezbollah.

When they are buying from us, they have zero clue that they are buying from the Mossad. We make like Truman Show. Everything is controlled by us behind the scenes. In their experience, everything is normal. Everything was 100% kosher, including businessmen, marketing, engineers, showroom, everything. To further the plot, Mossad hired the Gold Apollo saleswoman Hezbollah was used to working with before. She offered them the first batch of pagers as an upgrade free of charge. By September 2024, Hezbollah had 5,000 pagers in their pockets. The question for Israel, when to activate the sleeping bombs? There were hints Hezbollah

might be getting suspicious of the devices. So Mossad head Dadi Barnea gave the go-ahead, triggering the attack and shocking people around the world as it seemed more like a spy movie than reality. On September 17th at 3.30 p.m., pagers started beeping all over Lebanon. As I understand it, people with this pager got a message that said, you have an encrypted message. In order to access it, you have to push the two buttons, meaning that it would explode in their hands. That was the whole point. So if someone did not push the two buttons, what happened? It's the same effect. It's going to explode anyway. The explosive was triggered in Israel.

Yes. What ensued was mayhem. People with pagers blowing up on the street, on motorcycles, hospitals filling up with the wounded, limbs, fingers torn off, bloodied, blinded, holes in stomachs. For the most part, the explosions worked as planned, they say. Watch the man on the left. Those right next to him were unscathed. The very next day, Mossad finally activated the walkie-talkies that had been dormant for 10 years.

Some going off at the funerals of those killed by the pagers. All in all, about 30 people died, including two children. Around 3,000 were injured. The aim, it wasn't killing Hezbollah terrorist. If he's just dead, so he's dead. But if he's wounded, you have to take him to the hospital, take care of him. You need to invest money and efforts. And those people without hands and eyes are living proof, walking in Lebanon, of don't mess with us. They are walking proof of our superiority all around the Middle East.

Two days after the Pager attack, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, known for his fiery oratory, gave a subdued speech. If you look at his eyes, he was defeated. He already lost the war. And his soldiers looked at him during that speech, and they saw a broken leader. And this was the tipping point of the war. I don't know if you know that Nasrallah, when we operate the BIPA operation, just next to him in the bunker, several people at the BIPA receiving the message. And in his own eyes, he saw them collapsing. How do you know that? It's a strong rumor.

In the ensuing days, the Israeli Air Force hit targets all across Lebanon, killing over a thousand, many of them civilians. On September 27th, it dropped massive bombs on Nasrallah's bunker, assassinating him. Two months later, after more Israeli strikes over Lebanon and more civilian deaths, the war between Israel and Hezbollah ended with a ceasefire. Did you completely destroy and crush Hezbollah? I think it's a big question, and I think the honest answer will be no. But I think after this tipping point of the BIPR operation and the walkie-talkie and then IDF attack put Hezbollah in a very, very difficult situation. No chain of command, no spirit in their

soldiers asking, begging for a ceasefire. So you restore your sense of superiority, but what about your moral reputation? Don't you think Israel has to worry about its reputation? Definitely, but there is a prioritization. First, you have to defense your people not being killed by the thousands. And then, the reputation. The pagers have had a profound rippling effect, severely weakening Iran by leaving its proxy empire in ruins, with Hezbollah shattered in Lebanon, Assad toppled in Syria. We asked Agent Michael about the effect on Gaza. Shatala shattered in Lebanon. Assad toppled in Syria.

We asked Agent Michael about the effect on Gaza. How does that affect the situation with Hamas? The wind was taken out of Hezbollah's fight after the Pajar operation, and I'm hoping that it will have an effect also on the Hamas and hostage situation because they're looking at their sides and they're seeing no one next to them. They are completely isolated now.

In terms of the kind of warfare that was conducted with the walkie-talkies and the pagers, would you call it a psychological war? The day after the pagers exploded, people were afraid to turn on the air conditioners in Lebanon because they were afraid that they would explode. So there was, there is real fear. Was that an intention? We want them to feel vulnerable, which they are. We can't use the pagers again because we already did that. We've already moved on to the next thing. And they'll have to keep on trying to guess

what the next thing is. 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. There's been a lot of talk about stopping the flow of illegal immigration and drugs from Mexico.

But few people are talking about another crisis at the border, guns, specifically American guns. An estimated 200,000 to half million U.S. firearms are smuggled into Mexico every year, part of what's known as the Iron River. Mexico says those American guns are responsible for much of the cartel violence that's plagued its country. And now it's taking an unusual approach to try and stop it. It's suing. The government of Mexico has filed lawsuits in U.S. courts against a handful of gun stores and one of the largest gun manufacturers in America. It believes damming

that Iron River might also fix some of the problems that plague the U.S. If you think fentanyl overdoses are a problem, if you think migration across the border is a problem, if you think the spread of organized crime is a problem in the United States, then you should care about stopping the crime gun pipeline to Mexico. And you need to stop it at its source because all those problems are driven by the supply of U.S. guns to the cartels. Jonathan Lowy is an American attorney who's been battling the gun industry in court for 25 years. Mexico asked Lowy to help devise its strategy to cut off the gun pipeline after one of the deadliest chapters in the country's history that culminated with this. 2019. Mexican armed forces captured one of the most wanted drug lords in the world,

Ovidio Guzman Lopez, the son of the former Sinaloa cartel boss known as El Chapo. In their custody was the man U.S. prosecutors say was largely responsible for the massive influx of fentanyl in the United States. But what should have been a turning point in the war on drugs turned into a deadly five-hour gun battle with 600 cartel gunmen. That is a.50 caliber belt-fed rifle sourced from America. The cartel doused soldiers with gunfire, took hostages, and blocked entrances to the city, burning vehicles. Outgunned and hoping to end the bloodshed, Mexico's president at the time,

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, ordered Guzman to be released. This past March, we spoke to then-President Lopez Obr, in Mexico City. Homicides and cartel violence soared during his six-year term. We were surprised who he said was partly to blame. Where is the cartel getting their guns? From the United States. We have confiscated, in the time that I've been in government, 50,000 guns of high power, of high caliber, 50,000 guns, and 75% of them from the United States.

Which is why, he said, his government was pursuing two civil lawsuits in U.S. courts seeking $10 billion for the damages U.S. guns have caused in Mexico. The first, filed in 2021, included U.S. gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson and one of their wholesalers. The other filed a year later against five U.S. gun stores for what Mexico claims are quote, reckless and unlawful business practices that supply dangerous criminals. Is it the U.S.'s responsibility to stop guns from getting in the hands of the cartel? Or is it the Mexican government's responsibility to keep the guns out? Of both. Of both governments. But there has to be cooperation.

You cannot sell weapons to just anybody. Like the U.S., Mexico's constitution grants citizens the right to bear arms. But unlike the U.S., that right comes with a long list of restrictions. There's only one gun store in Mexico, in the middle of a heavily guarded military base in Mexico City. We were allowed in. But before customers can enter, they have to show proof they've passed psychological tests,

drug screens, and extensive background checks. The store sells about 1,000 guns a month, mostly shotguns, small-caliber rifles, and handguns. What civilians can't buy here are the weapons the cartel favors. Those are not legally sold anywhere in Mexico. Cartel's favorite weapons are weapons of war. Belt feds,.50 caliber rifles, guns that you can shoot from a mile away. The more expensive, the more powerful, the sexier they think they are.

It's a trophy. It is a trophy. Tim Sloan worked for the ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, for 22 years. His last assignment was running the ATF's four field offices in Mexico during some of the bloodiest years on record. Part of his job was tracing the guns recovered at crime scenes. In 2019, one of those scenes was inside a cartel ranch near Guadalajara. There was dead bodies everywhere. There was a 14-year-old girl chopping up bodies.

And so there were 55-gallon drums with body parts in them. It's something that the human mind can almost not comprehend or fathom. And all the weapons in that house came from the United States. All of them. Every person there was murdered by a firearm purchased in the U.S. And so it was, it made a very lasting impression on me. Sloan says most of the guns the ATF traced in Mexico were sold directly to traffickers or to so-called straw purchasers, someone who buys a firearm on behalf of another person. In this case, Americans buying guns that ultimately end up in the hands of the cartel. What did you learn during your time about how the cartel was getting these guns from the United

States into Mexico? Well, I mean, it's pretty easy, right? So you straw purchasers, you know, you're offering a 23-year-old girl in Arizona $4,000, $5,000 just to go into a store and buy a gun for you. She's going to do that. A lot of people are going to do that, especially if they have any addiction problems, but no criminal record. Can you send a 24-year-old to go buy an AK-47? Oh, as many as they want. Five, 500, they can buy as many as they want, as long as they're not prohibited. And how do they get them into Mexico? Well, that's the easy part. Just drive across the border. That porous border works both ways.

Over seven years, the ATF traced 50,000 American guns recovered in Mexico to gun dealers across the United States. But Mexico's lawsuit names just five dealers from one state, Arizona. In Mexico City, attorney Alejandro Solario spearheaded the lawsuits for the Mexican government. We believe they're liable for actively facilitating the trafficking of firearms that empowered the cartels, the fentanyl crisis. A cartel without firearm is just a gang. The five gun shops that you've named in Arizona, how did you choose those five gun shops?

It's based on who do we believe are the bad actors in this dynamic. It's difficult to know which gun dealers could be bad actors because U.S. law prohibits the ATF from publicly releasing specific gun trace information. I'm with the ATF National Tracing Center. But 60 Minutes reviewed internal ATF and Mexican law enforcement documents. According to the documents, 566 guns recovered in Mexico over a four-and-a-half-year period were traced back to the Arizona gun dealers named in Mexico's lawsuit. And nearly 200 of the guns came from one dealer, MOAZ, near Phoenix. Verichart Danger Murphy is the store's owner.

We sell guns here legally. Murphy declined to be interviewed by 60 Minutes. But after MOAZ was named in Mexico's lawsuit, he posted this response online. If we were actually doing something illegal, ATF, FBI would have already shut us down and I would be in jail. The ATF has said a crime gun trace does not necessarily indicate gun dealer wrongdoing. If you're a dealer and you have reason to know that that person is a straw buyer or gun trafficker, it's your legal obligation not to supply them

with guns. Jonathan Lowy, who is Mexico's co-counsel, has litigated gun cases in more than 40 states. The gun shop owners we spoke to said, look, I'm running the background standing in front of them on the other side of the counter is a potential criminal or supplier to the criminal market. Gun retailers say it's really hard to know sometimes if somebody's a straw buyer, right? That they come in with a good cover story, and you have to believe them. It's pretty obvious. I mean, you see these multiple sales of AR-15s. You see these large cash payments.

You see these persons coming back to the store every few days or every few weeks. I mean, these are not normal buying patterns. There are more than 75,000 licensed gun dealers in the United States, twice as many as U.S. post offices. Jonathan Lowy says most of those dealers are acting responsibly. About 90% of gun dealers sell zero crime guns. I mean, that is a great mark for the gun industry. That shows that if you pay attention to these obvious indicators of trafficking and straw buying, you can actually stop supplying crime guns. The problem is these

bad actors, and there's no good reason why manufacturers don't say, look, if you're selling our guns, use best practices. Which is why Mexico filed its other lawsuit against gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson. Under U.S. law, gun makers have typically been shielded from liability when one of their guns is used in a crime. But Mexico is arguing the manufacturer is aiding and abetting gun trafficking to the cartels. In court, Smith and Wesson called that allegation not true. They did not respond to our request for comment. How can you say manufacturers are responsible for anything when there are so many steps in the process

between the time that they make it and it goes to the retailer and then maybe it's sold to somebody else or resold? How can you trace it back and say it's the manufacturers? When manufacturers make the decision, we're going to sell guns through dealers no matter what their record is, no matter how many crime guns they're selling. That's on them. You say they know that the guns are going to the gun stores that are bad actors.

How do they know? Well, manufacturers and dealers and distributors all get trace data. That is, when law enforcement recovers a gun in crime, they determine its commercial history, and every seller on every point of the chain knows that that's a gun that they sold that was recovered in crime. If Mexico's lawsuit is successful, it could open the door for more lawsuits, foreign and domestic, against the gun industry. Earlier this year, gun manufacturers successfully petitioned the Supreme Court to review the case.

They argued they could face years of costly litigation by another country that's trying to bully the industry into adopting a host of gun control measures. Three years after the deadly battle that ended with his release, fentanyl drug lord Ovidio Guzman Lopez was finally recaptured in Sinaloa in 2023. His arrest sparked another gunfight that left 10 soldiers dead. The violence continues today. In the last four months, cartel infighting has killed more than 500 people in Sinaloa. According to documents obtained by 60 Minutes, 47 guns were seized after Guzman's capture,

including an AK-47-style rifle traced back to one of the defendants in Mexico's lawsuit, Amoe Z. Whoa, is that the new Kia Sportage? Yeah, I just got it. I love the updated styling and the distinctive LED lighting. And check this out, no key needed with digital key on my phone. Oh. And I can check it remotely on the Kia Connect app. I heard it also comes in a hybrid and a plug-in hybrid. It does, with a quiet ride and unbelievable fuel economy.

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Shop in-store or online at pandora.net to discover new styles. In 2021, jazz vocalist Samara Joy graduated from college. Months later, she released her first album. Now, she has three. She's won three Grammys and is up for two more for her latest Christmas release. Talk about joy to the world. She has sold out concerts all over America and Europe and is lining them up in Asia and South America. Music critics

are comparing her to jazz royalty Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald. Not bad for what she calls an accidental career. We caught up with her Christmas tour singing What Else. Joy to the world. Joy to the world, the Lord is come. That earth received her King. In every heart. In every heart. You may know Samara Joy as a jazz headliner, but come December, she's just one of the McClendon family.

This year, her foray into Christmas music scored two Grammy nominations. It's been a whirlwind few years. I don't know where my man is. Where can he be? What is he doing? I've been asking questions all over town. Where can he be? Where can he be? She's as surprised as anyone at her head-spinning success. After all, much of the jazz she sings the old standards a cool new gloss. Don't let him go Hard to believe that jazz was something she sort of stumbled upon.

Freshman me had no idea that this was in store, okay? That three years after graduation, I would be standing here before you like this. Day by day, I'm falling more and more in love with purchase. And day by day... This was a homecoming, the first time Samara Joy had returned to Purchase College in New York where she studied jazz. As we go through the years, day by day... It almost didn't happen. She told us it was a toss-up between business or music. One of your professors told us that when you showed up for your audition,

that you only had one song prepared. I was like, this is the only jazz song that I know. He allowed me to sing a hymn, too, which was very nice of him, very kind of him. But that was what I had to offer at that time. So what was it that pushed you on that path? I never wanted to regret it. I felt like I could always, even if I was in school for music, I could always get another job. But I just wanted to prioritize it first.

Worked out. Worked out. Worked out. I'd say so. She recorded her first songs in college with help from her professors and posted them online. Soon, she had a record deal. Critics say she sings like an old soul.

That's a Grammy nomination! But when she got her first Grammy nominations in 2022, she went full Gen Z. Get it! Get it! Sharing the moment with millions online. You danced, you shouted. Yeah, in New York, nobody cared. Nobody cared at all. They're like, just another Tuesday to them.

And then... Samara Joy! She won both, including the Grammy for Best New Artist. Oh, my gosh, I can't even believe it. I've been watching y'all on TV for, like, so long. So, to be here with you all, I'm so, so grateful. Thank you. So, where are you keeping all this golden hardware?

They're with my parents. They knew you wanted to do this? Yeah. And my dad, you know, he's a singer and a musician. My grandparents were singers. And my aunts and uncles, music is a part of my family. It's an integral part of how we express ourselves and share, you know, love for each other.

So there was no way you were gonna be an accountant? Nope. Joy celebrated online, too. Her Instagram and TikTok accounts are pulling in a younger crowd, a rarity in jazz. They come for the ride and stay for the music. Can we do one more? Now with a bigger band, Samara Joy's third album, Portrait, is her most ambitious yet.

There'll be no more blues, nothing but happiness when we settle down. There'll be no more blues, nothing but happiness when we settle down. There'll be no more blues Nothing but happiness When we settle down, there'll be no more blues She's writing her own songs, drawing inspiration from the jazz canon of the 1940s and 50s. And you're how old now? 24. Oh, gosh, I just turned 25. I forgot. What do you think when you hear yourself compared to Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald?

When I first got to purchase, Ella and Sarah were the first people that I listened to. They're part of my fundamental, you know, core and fundamental foundation. How do you make Ella fit you? Listening to her and listening to all of these singers, I feel like it allowed me to shape my idea of what my role could be as a vocalist, not just learn the melody, sing the melody, and that's it. But you really have to think like a musician and open your ears to what's happening around you

so that you can contribute to it and interact with it. Her voice is going to be remembered for a long, long time. Christian McBride is a world-renowned bassist. We met him at Minton's Jazz Club in Harlem. McBride told us Joy is a once-in-a-generation talent. He first heard her sing in 2019. He was a judge in a competition she had entered. When a heart is sober... And in comes Samara Joy. Yes. entered. When a heart is sober, it shatters right in the middle.

And in comes Samara Joy. Yes. And you're going, what? We see this young woman with this voice. She had such a mature sound and a way of having you believe what she was singing. We're like, huh? Who's grandma's in that little body, in that young body, you know? She was born Samara McClendon.

Joy is her middle name. But she'll tell you the McClendon name is her secret power. Her grandfather sang with the acclaimed Savettes, a gospel group out of Philadelphia. Her father toured with gospel superstar Andre Crouch. Gospel was the lifeblood of the McClendon household. So how does gospel fit in with your music? It's an inspiration and an influence

that will never go away in my voice. And I don't want it to. It's been a part of my life and in my ears and in my voice for so long that it's just an innate part of who I am, I feel like. And it just reminds me that this is for a higher purpose. Left alone Christian McBride told us Joy's gospel upbringing gives her voice an emotional depth

not all jazz singers can muster. In jazz, you get points for being smart. You get points for being creative. You don't always get points for tapping into the emotional pool. And I find that all of my favorite singers who come out of church, Sarah Vaughan being one of them, Aretha Franklin, obviously,

all the way down through somebody like Samara. There's that little thing. They can get here quicker, you know? You grew up with R&B and gospel, and you could have gone in that direction, but you chose to go toward jazz. Why? If anything, I kind of felt at home with jazz, you know? I felt like I could still be myself while I was learning about all of this new language.

I could still absorb it and then apply it in my own way. She was raised in a close-knit family in the Bronx. So how do you know a McClendon? Give them a mic. It's a family joke, but everybody sang all the time. Joy's father told us his daughter was always experimenting. Or mimicking artists on the radio. So when Tony McClendon joined us, we had to ask.

So I understand that you two are pretty good at car karaoke. Oh, yeah. Can you give us a little taste? Okay, so we did go to the Stevie Wonder concert. And on the way home, we were singing along to one of my favorite deep cuts of Stevie. In me, trying to find my whereabouts, what shall I do? See, if another thing about McClendon,

we don't remember the first time. We met more McClendons as part of Joy's Christmas tour in Morristown, New Jersey Where she was joined by her dad, her cousins, and an uncle. Divine. Divine. Divine. Divine. So very nice to know you. No one is more pivotal to the McClendon family than its 94-year-old patriarch, Elder Goldwire, Joy's grandfather.

He told us he was in awe of her. And you just know what happened next. What we shall be What we know But nothing prepared us for the power Elder Goldwire unleashed on stage. His frailty vanished. is my soul Yeah! Yeah!

Yeah! Chestnuts rusting on an open fire Jack Frost slipping at your nose The McClendon legacy looks to be in safe hands with Samara Joy. She may not have planned for a career in jazz, but she told us she thinks she'll stick with it. To you Now, the last minute of 60 Minutes.

Tonight, the last minute of 60 Minutes features more of jazz singer Samara Joy. A three-time Grammy winner, her Christmas release is nominated for two more. Our small gift to you is more joy. Christmas time is here. We'll be drawing you. Oh, that we should always see such spirit through the year. Oh, that we should always see such spirit through the year. I'm Sharon Alfonsi.

We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes. Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah.