60 Minutes - 1/31/2016: Anonymous, Inc., Top of the World

Episode Date: February 1, 2016

The United States is becoming known as a go-to place for crooked foreigners, like corrupt officials, to launder their ill-gotten money. When non-profit watchdog Global Witness wanted to see how easy it was to move questionable funds, they sent their investigator posing as a representative of a fictitious African government minister into the offices of American lawyers to see if they would be willing to assist. Steve Kroft reports. Sharyn Alfonsi goes to the top of the world to report on scientists trying to get to the bottom of climate change and sea level rise by studying one of the largest glaciers in Greenland.   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 man in the gray coat with a German accent is an undercover investigator posing as the representative of a fictitious African minister who wants to bring millions in questionable funds into the U.S. If it's not in his name, then he needs what is known as a straw man. It's part of a hidden camera sting operation to see how willing American lawyers might be to offer advice. So we have to scrub it at the beginning if we can or scrub it at the intermediary location that I mentioned. There's a clear pitch consistently presented in every one of these tapes of what amounts to an incredible number of red flags that scream corruption.

Dirty money. Dirty money. Petermann Glacier in Greenland is one of the largest glaciers in the Arctic Circle and one that's experienced dramatic melting. Are you staying warm? Although it is a harsh and dangerous environment, it has drawn some of the world's leading climate scientists to study its ice sheet and look at its effects on the ocean.

We watched as they attempted a first-ever look at what's happening 300 feet below the ice. I'm Steve Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Steve Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. Mitsubishi Outlander brings out another side of you. Your regular side listens to classical music. Your adventurous side rocks out with the dynamic sound Yamaha.

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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. If you like crime dramas and movies with international intrigue, then you probably have a basic understanding of money laundering. It's how dictators, drug dealers, corrupt politicians, and other crooks

avoid getting caught by transforming their ill-gotten gains into assets that appear to be legitimate. They do it by moving the dirty money through a maze of dummy corporations and offshore bank accounts that conceal their identity and the source of the funds. And most of it would never happen without the help, witting or unwitting, of lawyers, accountants, and incorporators, the people who actually create these anonymous shell companies and help move the money. In fact, the U.S. has become one of the most popular places in the world to do it.

Tonight, with the help of hidden camera footage, we're going to show you how easy it seems to have become to conceal questionable funds from law enforcement and the public. You need to look no further for evidence than the changing skyline of New York City, where much of the priciest residential real estate is being snapped up not by individuals, but by anonymous shell companies with secret owners. There's nothing illegal about it as long as the money is legitimate, but there's no way to tell if you don't know who the real buyers are. It's one of the reasons Global Witness, a London-based non-profit organization that exposes international corruption, came to New York City 19 months ago. It wanted to see how helpful U.S. lawyers would be in concealing questionable funds.

This hidden camera footage was shot in law firms across Manhattan without the lawyer's knowledge by the man in the gray coat with the German accent. So it's Ralph. Ralph Kaiser. Ralph Kaiser is not his real name. He's an investigator for Global Witness, posing here as the representative of a government official from a poor West African country who wants to move millions of dollars in suspicious funds into the United States. And he needs the lawyer's help. Can I tell you what country, what ministry this is? I can't tell you. It's one of those mineral-rich countries in West Africa. There are not so many.

Attorney Gerald Ross and the other lawyers were told secrecy was essential because the African minister had amassed his fortune collecting special payments from foreign companies that he'd helped obtain valuable mineral rights. So companies are eager to get hold of rare earths or other minerals. Yes. And so they pay some special money for it. I wouldn't name it bribe. I would say facilitation money. Kaiser said it was all

legal. He told attorney James Silkenot and other lawyers that the minister was shopping for a townhouse, a jet, and a yacht, but his name must not be connected to the purchases. If his name now would appear in connection with buying some real estate here and other items, it would look at least very, very embarrassing. Right, because presumably his salary and wherever it is would not cover the kinds of acquisitions he's been doing. For sure, that's the salary of a teacher here. And so how can we make sure that he is being able to buy property here

and to live a nice life, but his name being out? Right. Any guesses as to how much money we're talking about for the brownstone and the other items? I mean, for the brownstone, we're talking about $10 million. For a second-hand guy stream, I could imagine 10, 20 million. A yacht would be at least 200, 300 million. The fictitious story of the African minister was cooked up in Global Witness's London office, based on an actual money laundering case.

The investigator phoned 50 New York law firms with experience in private asset protection and managed to get face-to-face meetings with 16 different lawyers in 13 firms. I'm very frank. It's, I would say, gray money. I think somebody told me, you name it, black money. Global Witness says the pitch was intentionally designed to raise red flags and to give the lawyers good reason to suspect that the minister's millions came from official corruption. And they all did. It to suspect that the minister's millions came from official corruption. And they all did. It's only that the money is a bit tainted. Tainted. Okay. Okay. Or you gave another expression. Honest grave. An honest grave. So, okay, fine. So I

have to be frank. It's honest grave. How would you name it? Some people call it bribe. How do you name it bribe? That's the business deal. OK, bribe. It's actually bribe. You know, the story of the fictitious African minister would probably have raised eyebrows for the average person on the street. Charmian Gooch is the co-founder of Global Witness, a public advocacy group that exposes corruption in the developing world.

Previous undercover investigations exposed the global trade in African blood diamonds. This investigation, Gooch says, exposes serious flaws in the U.S. legal system that have made it a hub for international money laundering. What the lawyers laid out for us in some detail was all the different possibilities and ways in which it could be done. What you're saying is if you want to get dirty money into the United States, it's not that hard to do. What I'm saying is there is an open door, and it's pretty shocking and pretty concerning, because that money could be coming from anywhere. Of the 16 lawyers that Global Witness recorded in these preliminary meetings, only attorney Jeffrey Herman flatly declined to participate and showed Ralph Kaiser the door. I have some real questions about that. Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,

under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, bribing foreign officials is illegal. By Americans. By Americans. But Americans are not involved. So it's money from other nationals, not American entities, not American nationals? Pardon me? It's not something.

Aside from that one exception, 12 out of the 13 law firms, including 15 out of the 16 lawyers, not only heard Ralph Kaiser out, they suggested ways that the suspicious funds could be moved into the U.S. without compromising the minister's identity. Attorney James Silkenot was selected by Global Witness because at the time he was president of the American Bar Association. Yet he and his colleague, Hugh Finnegan, provided what former prosecutors told us was a roadmap

of how to conceal the source of the funds, using layers of anonymous interconnected shell companies in multiple jurisdictions. Presumably we would set up a little bit of a series of owners to try and, again, protect privacy as much as anything else. Yeah. So Company A is owned by Company B, which is owned jointly by Company C and D, and your party owns all or the majority of the shares of C and D. So we create several companies yes

all in new york or i said at some point probably pretty quickly you go offshore attorney john jankoff and his partner lawrence gabe recommended variations of the same strategy a lot of people in africa use the isle of. Some of them use Lichtenstein. So he would just take his millions of dollars, put it in Isle of Man. He could put it into a Swiss bank account, the Swiss will have it, and then he comes to us. And then he comes up and says, I want to buy a townhouse. Attorney Mark Koppelik also suggested that the minister could move his money out of West Africa to Europe, where it could be scrubbed in an anonymous corporate entity that his firm would be happy to set up. The money as it sits now, is it in his name? It's in different names.

Okay. So it will come as those different names? Including his name, yes. So we have to scrub it at the beginning, if we can, or scrub it at the intermediary location that I mentioned. So how to do this intermediary? That means a bank in Liechtenstein or Luxembourg? Luxembourg. We will set up an appropriate entity, call it clientoverseas.com or whatever,

and then that will send money into the United States. If that was a banker talking instead of a lawyer, he could be in serious trouble. That's because under U.S. law, bankers are required to report suspicious financial activity to the authorities. Lawyers are under no such legal obligation. Banks in America are required to know their customer, are required to be very cognizant of risk and to report on it if there is an issue there

around money laundering. And yet, absolutely, bizarrely, American lawyers aren't. This is clearly an issue, and I think our investigation has shown the potential for what can happen because of that lack of regulation. Global Witness says that anomaly is just one of the flaws in the U.S. legal system that helps facilitate money laundering. We're going to call it here, Anonymous Inc. Another is the ease with which anonymous shell companies can be set up here to conceal ownership

of money and assets. Last year, two million new corporations were set up in the United States, many with no offices, products or employees, just an address and perhaps a bank account. In many states across America, you need less identification to set up and open up an anonymous company than you do to get a library card. Gooch says anonymous shell companies are like getaway cars for crooks, designed to put them as far away as possible from the scene of their crime. According to a World Bank study,

the U.S. was the favorite place for corrupt officials to set up anonymous shell companies. There was a very good academic study, and America came up as the easiest place to set up an anonymous company after Kenya out of 180 countries. After Kenya? After Kenya. So did that study have anything to do with your decision to go ahead and do these undercover investigations? It inspired us. I mean we almost thought it can't be this bad can it? And unfortunately what we found is it is. All of the attorneys expressed some concerns like this one from Gerald Ross. I've got to be very careful myself. This one looks like I'm laundering money.

Sure. And that could cost me my license. But later, he suggested that the questionable money could be wired directly into his client escrow account, bypassing scrutiny from the banks. And when I get money from my other clients, it always comes in with some strange name on it. I don't even ask. Nobody asks. It doesn't come from Minister Joe Jones. It comes from the XYZ account. John Jankoff said they would need to get a legal opinion that the money was clean, then suggested that the minister use front men to open up overseas bank accounts.

If it's not in his name, then he needs what is known as a straw man. Practically speaking, if the money leaves the country, his name should not be attached to the wire. It should be other people's names. And we know this happens. We know this happens. This is how money laundering occurs all over the world. But that does not mitigate the power of seeing it up close. We showed the tapes to Chip Ponzi, a former top official at the Treasury Department, whose job was to stop financial crime, terrorist financing, and money laundering.

He says there's nothing wrong with lawyers setting up anonymous shell companies to protect the client's privacy, but if it's done to conceal criminal activity, that's when it becomes a problem. There's a clear pitch consistently presented in every one of these tapes of what amounts to an incredible number of red flags that scream corruption. Dirty money. Dirty money. Bad actors. Bad actors. They don't want to be found.

And they have a need. They've got to move their money from a point where they've received corrupt proceeds, in this case, to a point where they can enjoy those proceeds. And to get this money from point A to point B, they need help in laundering it effectively. Ponce says he was dismayed with the ease and the comfort with which attorneys seemed to be willing to turn a blind eye and discuss a matter that was likely to be illegal. What's essential to recognize is that this is after it's been revealed that the potential client is representing an African minister with hundreds of millions of dollars

of funds received through effectively bribes. This is more than legal advice. This is legal advice on how to evade controls or at a minimum very clear global standards on financial transparency to allow our countries to go after proceeds of crime. Attorney Mark Koplick told the Global Witness investigator that he preferred using money managers and investment firms to move funds. He thought it was less risky than using banks. I would suggest three or four. Some are bigger, some are smaller. The smaller ones are often more flexible and understanding

and less concerned about their reputation because they fly to a greater extent below the radar screen. Sometimes the advice took the form of suggesting banks in countries that might be less vigilant about money laundering. We would have to look into how far specific banks looked into, you know, the know-your-customer laws and how far they would dig. In many ways, you'd probably be better off with a smaller bank. Because it would be a possibility. Because the bigger banks are much more serious about looking into that stuff. That reputation. And there may

be other banking systems that are less rigorous on this than the U.S. What would it be? The usual banking havens I think would be ones you would want to consider.

We could divide the list of countries where the banking systems require less detail on ownership or source of funds. While James Silkenot, the former president of the American Bar Association, and his partner, Hugh Finnegan, listened to the pitch and suggested ways in which they might be able to help. They were also the most suspicious of Ralph Kaiser and his African minister, beginning just five minutes into the meeting. We need to talk about the risks or just concerns about where he got the money and how to explain that. That's it. There are issues there. The transactions in which he would be involved here wouldn't be part of facilitating payments,

but if that's really where the money came from and if there were, you know, quote-unquote crimes committed someplace else, that starts to be an issue. They were also the most cautious about moving forward. Towards the end of the meeting, Hugh Finnegan, who is off-camera here, said the firm would feel obligated to report anything it believed to be illegal. Bearing in mind what you said, no American law was violated, no local law was violated, but if we're aware that a crime is being committed, we have an obligation

to report that. Mr. Silconat says we need to talk about the risks or just concerns about where he got the money and how to explain that. And that's a welcome. I mean, he's already been told where the money came from and how he got the money.

Correct. So it's a healthy recognition that there's an issue here. If you could ask him anything about this meeting, what would it be? What's going through your head? Why are you continuing this conversation? Why not just say no? Is the business that important? Neither Sukunot nor Finnegan would agree to an on-camera interview, but they sent us a statement saying they only discussed generic information that could be found on the Internet and that their conduct was entirely appropriate.

The camera followed us after the meeting they wrote. It would have shown us agreeing that Kaiser was disreputable and that we would not deal with him again. None of the other lawyers agreed to give us an on-camera interview either. 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.

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. When a non-profit organization called Global Witness came to New York 19 months ago, it secretly recorded hidden camera interviews with 16 Manhattan lawyers. Its investigator was posing as the representative of an African

government minister trying to move millions of dollars of suspicious funds. Global Witness, which specializes in exposing international corruption, wanted to see how much help the lawyers would provide in setting up anonymous shell companies and offshore bank accounts to move the suspicious funds into the U.S. and at the same time protect the identity of the fictitious African official. Good to see you. Good to see you. Good to see you. The undercover investigator, who called himself Ralph Kaiser, told the lawyers that the minister had used his official position to collect tens of millions of dollars in special payments from foreign companies

to help them obtain valuable mineral rights. He wanted to move the money to the United States to buy a house, a jet, and a yacht. So therefore he wants to bring in the money into the U.S. So starting with the brownstone and then probably buying Gulfstream jet, he wants to commission the building of a yacht and buy probably more property. The story was intentionally devised to raise red flags and lead the lawyers to believe that the minister's money was dirty. During the meetings, only one of the 16 lawyers, Jeffrey Herman, told him no. It's the same for me. My standards are higher.

The rest expressed varying degrees of interest, with most of them offering advice on how it could be done. We do everything, soup to nuts, so there's no limitation. We don't say, oh, we don't do windows, or we don't deal with the financial money manager, whatever. No, we orchestrate and organize the entire thing. We're happy to take that responsibility. What's important to point out, and it cannot be overstated, is that none of the lawyers we've shown you broke any laws, in part because the African minister didn't really exist,

there were no hundreds of millions of dollars, and global witnesses Sharmi and Gooch said no money ever changed hands. So this is sort of a morality test. It wasn't. It was a test on the system. You know, people could make the argument, look, all these guys did really was just listen to this person that came into their office. They didn't make a deal. They didn't sign up. They said, we need to do some more research.

And you know what? They'd be absolutely right to say that, but they need to say something else too, which is that those lawyers laid out in often considerable detail a myriad of different ways to bring money into America. None of the lawyers agreed to take on the African minister as a client, nor were they asked to. It was a preliminary meeting that ended with most of the attorneys expressing interest in continuing the dialogue and some enthusiastic about landing the business. I'm happy to chat whenever it's

possible to move the ball forward on this. Fantastic, great. Good. Thanks for coming in. Mark Koplik and Albert Grant foresaw no problem as long as the money was clean and gave no indication they planned to do any checking themselves. They went so far as to discuss legal fees. Legal fees will be substantial, average currently from $150,000 to $100,000. Koblik also suggested conducting a test in which a portion of the suspicious funds would be sent into the United States. A million dollars. A million dollars, so it's a test. Yeah. Because I said probably we would start with around $50 million probably. I could imagine. I would say a million dollars.

A million dollars. If anything goes wrong, it will be painful, but it won't be life threatening. Right, exactly. John Jankoff and his partner Lawrence Gabe, who is off camera here, also seemed willing to go forward. We would orchestrate it, one legal fee, cover everything. However, Gabe did express some concerns about the transactions. Who can set up this structure? Could you do it? cover everything. However, Gabe did express some concerns about the transactions. Who can set up this structure? Could you do it? Yeah, your brother-in-law does it all the time.

Well, okay. I don't think he does it with money that may be questionable, and that we have to find out about. At the end of that meeting, they look forward to the next conversation, on the telephone, not on email. Okay, give me a phone number where we can reach you. I'm putting this in emails. Sending an email is just an old man would be fine as well. I don't like emails. You don't like emails? That's how you catch people. The hidden camera tapes raise all sorts of ethical questions,

not just about the behavior of the lawyers, but about the methods used by Global Witness in making them. We showed the footage to Bill Simon, a law professor at Columbia University, who is one of the country's top legal ethicists. I think it draws attention to the fact that lawyers may be playing an important role in money laundering that requires more scrutiny. Have you ever seen anything like this before? No. Never? Never. What's your overall impression of it?

Any lawyer is going to be uncomfortable about the fact that this was a sting in which somebody lied his way into a lawyer's office and secretly recorded statements a lawyer thought he was making to a client. That's kind of unprecedented, and it's kind of inconsistent with the bar's norms about confidentiality. So I'm a little uneasy about that. That's kind of unprecedented, and it's kind of inconsistent with the bar. It's norms about confidentiality. So I'm a little uneasy about that. On the other hand, I think that the tapes expose conduct of great public consequence. You think it's valuable that the public sees it? Yeah, I think it's very valuable. You know, confidentiality is for the benefit of the client, not the lawyer. But the lawyers benefit from it because conduct that goes on under the protection of confidentiality is never scrutinized by the public, and lawyers are never accountable for it.

So the sting actually brings some accountability to conduct that ought to be accountable. In its own report, Global Witness includes an opinion from two legal ethicists, including Bill Simon of Columbia. It says that if attorneys Mark Koplik, John Jankoff, and Gerald Ross had been responding to a real request, their conduct would not comply with the professional responsibilities of lawyers. It said the attorneys displayed a cynical, invasive attitude toward law. The ethicist also noted that the rules are vague, and we do not expect that all lawyers will agree with us.

Simon put then-ABA President James Silkenot and his partner Hugh Finnegan in a different category, even though they provided advice on how to move questionable funds into the U.S. What makes Silkenot different from the other lawyers? Silkenot was quite clear that he would not assist illegal conduct. And he even indicated at one point that he would report the client if he found the client engaged in illegal conduct. And then also Silkenaut was fairly clear that he would need more information before he agreed to represent the client. On the other hand, he clearly seems interested in this.

He clearly seems interested and even a little enthusiastic about it. Anything wrong with that? I find it regrettable, but I'm not sure as a professional responsibility authority I could say it was inconsistent with his duties under the rules. Simon says the only lawyer who truly fulfilled the ideals of the legal profession was Jeffrey Herman, who truly fulfilled the ideals of the legal profession was Jeffrey Herman, who listened to the pitch, decided it probably involved illegal activity, and ended the meeting. This ain't for me.

My standards are higher. I'm not interested. Do you know anybody who would be able to do so? I don't think so, and I wouldn't recommend it either. Yeah, yeah. Because those persons would be able to do so. I don't think so, and I wouldn't recommend it either. Because those persons would be insulted. Charmian Gooch says the point of Global Witness's hidden camera investigation was not to target or entrap lawyers for bad behavior. The problem, she says, are lax laws and toothless regulations

that make it ridiculously easy for criminals to launder $300 billion a year in the United States. This is real public interest information. How are you going to get that out to them if you can't show them what's happening behind closed doors? You couldn't have done this any other way. I think unless the public and policymakers can really see for themselves what gets said across the desk, across the table, in a meeting like this, it's kind of hard to really believe and take on board. Gooch says there's a simple solution, but it's been politically impossible to achieve in the United States. Just ask Carl Levin, the longtime chairman of the Senate's Permanent

Subcommittee on Investigation. Until he retired last year, he spent years trying to pass a law that would require the states to collect one additional piece of information from people forming corporations. One line, who's the real owner? Not who's the agent forming it, not who's the lawyer representing the owner. Who is the beneficial owner, the real owner? And it's not at all complicated. But the bills never made it out of committee, in part because of strong opposition from the American Bar Association. What's the American Bar Association's objection to this? The lawyers are helping form corporations, and they're afraid, I guess, that if you

put a damper on the formation of corporations, that you're putting some damper on legal business. The irony is that the White House, the Justice Department and the U.S. Treasury have been among the world's strongest proponents for cracking down on money laundering. Yet the U.S. is one of the easiest places in the world to set up the anonymous companies that facilitate it. It's a heck of a paradox, isn't it? And, you know, I think that the American Bar Association needs to get behind the need for regulation

in the way that European lawyers have had to do exactly the same. And I think that, you know, it's... I think the American government needs to answer that question. Global Witness may have inadvertently gotten a sassy answer to that question from attorney Mark Coplick in its hidden camera video. Coplick explained to the representative of the phony African minister why he never worried about government subpoenas. They don't send the lawyers to jail because we run the country. Do you run the country? Still do. I love it. Still do. I should say some lawyers run the country.

So you are some of them, two of them? Yes. A small amount, but yes. We're still members of a privileged class in this country. So what does it mean you run the country? It means you... We make the laws, and when we do so, we make them in a way that is advantageous to the lawyers. Hit pause on whatever you're listening to and hit play on your next adventure. Stay three nights this summer at Best Western and get $50 off a future stay.

Life's a trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Visit bestwestern.com for complete terms and conditions. One of the most significant efforts to study changes in the climate has been taking place near the top of the world. It's a place called Petermann Glacier in Greenland, one of the largest glaciers in the Arctic Circle and a glacier that has experienced dramatic melting. It is a harsh and dangerous environment and it has drawn some of the world's leading climate scientists who are only able to work there a little over a month a year. We wanted to see how that work is proceeding, how they're able to move equipment and people in such a hostile place, and what they've discovered so far. So we went to the top of the world to find out.

Our journey took us 700 miles above the Arctic Circle to the U.S.'s Thule Air Force Base in northern Greenland, built at the start of the Cold War to watch for Soviet missiles. It is an alien landscape, home to curious Arctic hares and packs of prehistoric-looking musk ox. From there, we flew even further. The destination? Petermann Glacier. It's on the northwest coast of Greenland, just a few hundred miles south of the North Pole. To get there in a helicopter took us four hours over a rarely seen landscape that is both severe and serene.

The last town we'd see was Connock, with 700 residents and more huskies than people. Locked in by ice nine months of the year, villagers have always hunted seal and narwhal to survive. Greenland is three times the size of Texas, and 80% of it is covered in ice. But it now loses more ice than it gains in snowfall every year. We saw evidence of the imbalance everywhere. Blue gashes across the ice.

Rivers of rushing meltwater. And the occasional thunderous crack of icebergs dropping into the sea. We still had 300 miles to go. And stopped twice to refuel along the way. These barrels were left behind for us by the scientists who made the trip to Petermann Glacier three weeks earlier. This is the ultimate self-service gas station. The middle of nowhere. This will keep us going for how much longer?

Yeah, we can fly two and a half hours. Our pilots, native Greenlanders, kept a rifle nearby at each stop to protect us from polar bears. Have you seen polar bears out here? Yeah, a lot. So now it's ready. Now we're safe. Finally, we arrived at Petermann Glacier. Ah, there's the camp. And spotted the ice camp below. Great to see you.

So who did you upset to get put out here? Oh no, the guards, the guards. Keith Nichols is an expert in drilling in remote places. And in terms of remote, this would be really hard to beat. It feels like you're on another planet. If you take a walk around here, you could be expecting Scotty to beam you up. It is extraordinary. Nichols and a team of scientists were drawn to this remote sliver of Greenland in part by these satellite images. In 2010, a chunk of ice

four times the size of Manhattan broke off. Then, two years later, another large chunk came down. The glacier has receded by 20 miles in five years. Nichols and his team are trying to drill beneath it. This is a lot of work in difficult conditions. What do you hope to learn? What we're trying to learn is how the oceans are interacting with the ice, how they're melting it. We're trying to predict how in the future that melting might change. To drill through the ice, they heated melt water from the glacier to make a hot water drill to pierce through the 300 foot thick ice. There has to be serious challenge to running equipment like this in this kind of weather. The biggest challenge is we've got water and it's very cold so if we have water freezing in hoses that can be devastating for the projects. This is the moment the coring machine struck the

bottom of the sea floor. A half mile beneath the ice they made history. It was the first time anyone has ever collected sediment from beneath the ice shelf in Greenland. The ocean beneath ice shelves is probably the least accessible part of the world ocean. And just getting access to that is a triumph, frankly, as far as we're concerned. The ice shelf extends out from the glacier and floats on the ocean. They believe it acts like a dam, holding back the ice from sliding into the sea. If it goes away, sea levels go up. Is there a sense of urgency in the work that you're doing? So sea level rise is the big question that we're trying to get at. And Peter

this experiment here gives us an opportunity to get at those processes, to try and understand the basic physics as to how that can happen. Our visit to the ice camp was cut short. Our pilots warned us something called ice fog was moving in and could strand us here for days. We hightailed it back to the helicopter, heading to another outpost of the expedition, what the scientists call Boulder Camp, set up on the edge of Peterman Glacier. Sean Marcotte and a team of geologists have been here for weeks, gathering samples from rocks. So this was probably deposited when the ice was maybe a few hundred to a few thousand feet

thicker. And when it was deposited, you're probably talking about maybe 500, 600 feet of ice above us. Above where we are. Above where we are now. Petermann would have been much larger, and it would have been dropping these rocks all over the surface. To the person at home who's looking at you guys just chipping away at rocks and going, why should I care about this?

We know that if you warm the planet up, the glaciers respond, they melt. The question is, at what rate? How fast is that going to happen, and where is it going to happen, I care about this. We know that if you warm the planet up, glaciers respond, they melt. The question is at what rate, how fast is that going to happen and where is it going to happen and where are the most vulnerable spots of this ice sheet? To understand all of that, you have to understand how the ice sheet, what controls an ice sheet. We need to understand this glacier so that we can provide a better prediction for the larger ice sheet. That matters to us because of sea level. If these glaciers can respond dynamically, then we should all be concerned because that can create dynamic changes in sea level and

flood infrastructure. And we need to know that for planning for the future. We camped out next to the scientists. With 24 hours of light, we slept in these tents under the midnight sun. In the morning, we were shuttled out to meet the Odin, a Swedish icebreaker making its way around Petermann Glacier. The Odin supports the scientists on land and acts as a floating laboratory. Named after a Norse god who relentlessly sought wisdom, it's home to more than 50 climate scientists from around the world with similar convictions. Their work is funded mostly by the Swedish government

and the U.S.'s National Science Foundation. Larry Mayer is one of the geologists on the Odin. He's using sonar to map the ocean floor, creating the first detailed maps that show how Petermann Glacier slid into the sea. You can see it, like skid marks of a car at an accident scene. Yeah, the ice went here and the ice went there. And we can see it all, and it stopped here. How much of the world's oceans have been mapped with this kind of detail? Oh, probably on the order of six or or 7%. Very, very little, yeah. You can only make the trip to Petermann Glacier a few weeks each summer when the ice melts enough to allow passage.

You can see those blocks of ice drifting by. Expedition leader Alan Mix is running the ship's coring operation, trying to grab sediment from the sea floor. There's actually a coring site right now is under that block of ice, and we just can't get there. So we're trying to drift with the ice and just sort of sneak up on it gently. It's hard to sneak up on anything in an icebreaker. Yodin doesn't so much as sail as it does smash the ice like a 13,000-ton hammer.

Once in position, they throw something called a piston core, like a dart, at the bottom of the ocean. Oh, that doesn't sound good. After multiple attempts... Go to the next one, but we'll hit it with a gravity core. A core sample like this is collected. Inside the ship's lab, the multi-year process of investigating those cores begins. What's your best guess? How old is this? So the base of this core probably is no more than 10,000 years. Ann Jennings is with the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. She says each core

holds clues about Peterman Glacier's past. Well, we didn't really expect to find things living under the ice shelf, but we have. What have you found? This one we found is called Sibicidoides woolerstorfi. It has a big name for a little bug. Easy for you to say. It looks like a little seashell. And it is a seashell, but it's a single-celled animal. That single-celled animal, like all living creatures, is made out of carbon, allowing scientists to determine when it lived. Which tells you what? The age of the sediments.

So we can take then the depth scale here and convert it to age. And then we can say, when did the ice retreat? How quickly did it retreat? Was there a lot of melt water coming out? You can get all that from what looks like mud. Yes. After a week in Greenland, we headed home. But the scientists kept working, taking advantage of the final days of the short Arctic summer.

The 66 core samples they collected during their month at sea will be studied by scientists around the world for decades. This is the largest core repository in the world. Peter Domenical is a paleoclimatologist at Columbia University. He says the cores collected in Greenland are like a black box of the Earth's inner workings. This one he collected just south of Greenland. So this is today's climate, and we've had about 10,000 years of relatively warm climate. And then we go 10,000 years in the past, boom, there's the last ice age. This is when Long Island was formed, when Cape Cod was formed. Go on, you can just find this color, and this is filled with these rocks, what we called ice-rafted detritus,

until this period, when, whoa, there's another warm phase, and then another cold phase, and then another warm phase, a short cold phase, a longer warm phase, and then, boom, another ice age. And so you've had cold, warm, cold, warm, cold, warm today. How do we know that the warming we're seeing now, how do we not know it's part of this warm,

cold, warm, cold? That's a great question. These transitions are gradual and kind of almost like a tide wave or something. And this transition, when you get to today, it goes boom, suddenly very warm. Domenicao says the cores pulled from Petermann Glacier will fill in a crucial piece of the climate change puzzle. How impressive was it that they got to Petermann Glacier? It's impressive. What's more impressive is that we haven't been there every year and that we're not doing this every year.

We should be doing this, we should be monitoring this whole system with much greater focus than we are now. How quickly have we seen the changes in Greenland? The changes that are happening right now as a result of human activities are remarkable and they're happening incredibly fast. And it's not only happening fast, but it's accelerating. And it's important to really get our mind around what we're saying

there. We're not just saying that climate in the Arctic is changing. It's changing at an accelerating rate. So it basically means it's starting to melt, but it's melting at a faster and faster clip. So anyone who knows what it's like to fall off a cliff, that's what it's doing. I'm Steve Croft. Super Bowl 50 is on CBS next Sunday night, so we'll be back in two weeks with another edition of 60 Minutes.