60 Minutes - 3/15/2015: Dead or Alive, A Few Good Women, Back to the Wild

Episode Date: March 16, 2015

Scott Pelley reports on how errors to the SSA's Death Master File can result in fraudulent payments and identity headaches; David Martin reports on the Marines' search for women to serve in combat; and, Lesley Stahl reports on a family of zoo gorillas who are released to the wild. 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

There are very few things that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And, of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month. With all of the mysteries that life has to offer, a few certainties can really go a long way. Subscribe today for the peace of mind you've been searching for. Public Mobile, different is calling. 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. How many of you have been declared dead by the federal government? All of you. 86 million names are on a list called the Death Master File. If your name is on it, the Social Security Administration has declared you dead and shared that with banks law enforcement and many government agencies you might depend on you couldn't get access to your bank accounts you couldn't get a credit card how did you live well for a time I lived

in my car these Marines are two weeks into a grueling infantry officer course he shows pain finish him major Scott Cuomo says every one of these men has suffered some kind of injury. There's not a guy here right now that's not hurting in some way, shape, or form. One of them, the guy broke his nose last Friday. Nobody cares. Is he going to fight today? Nobody cares. So how would a woman do in that? If she comes to this course and she gets to this point,

she'll be treated just like the men are. So we'll see. For the first time in its history, the Marine Corps has opened up this punishing course to women. Can they pass the test? Have a look and judge for yourself. Damien Aspinall likes to play tug-of-war with tigers and pet rhinos on his very own wildlife refuge in England. But gorillas are his best buddies,

and wrestling with them is his favorite pastime. Now, the tricky thing is getting out. But Damien is controversial because of his efforts to move his zoo-born gorillas to the wilds of Africa, a project conservationists warned us might not go well. I'm Steve Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Morley Safer.

I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. It was Benjamin Franklin who wrote, nothing can be said to be certain but death and taxes. Turns out with taxes, that may be true, but not so much with death. In America, the job of ultimately accounting for who is dead or alive belongs to the Social Security Administration, which compiles something called the Death Master File.

There are about 86 million names on this national list of the deceased. And it's deadly serious business, because when you're added to the file, that means that banks, the IRS, Medicare, law enforcement, and the like scratch you out of existence. But we found that the death master file is often fatally flawed. A lot of people who pass on don't get on the list, which costs taxpayers billions of dollars in fraudulent payments to people standing in for the departed. And then there are those who are on the death master file who are very surprised to hear that they're dead. How many of you have been declared dead by the federal government? All of you. You're looking pretty well to me. This would be a seance except these are living, breathing Americans that we conjured

up from around the country, all declared dead by the Social Security Administration. Don Pilger passed away when he tried to report the death of his wife. This is a form from the Social Security Administration. The idea was you were going to call this number and essentially report that your wife had passed. Exactly, and that's what I did on the following Monday. Eight days later, I went to access my bank account, and they kept saying invalid PIN. So I went to the bank. I give the lady the problem I was having. She typed my numbers into the computer and she grabbed my hand. She says, Mr. Pilger, I don't believe this.

They reported you deceased and not your wife. Christina Pace's life was cut short at an early age. I was in college. I walked into the bank to open up an account, and same thing. We can't help you. Well, why? You're coming up as deceased. You need to go to a Social Security office.

And I did, but just randomly, years later, it would come up. I'd want to get a car or something. Oh, no. Oh, let me guess, I'm dead. Betty Denault was summoned to her Social Security office where the computer read like an epitaph. She pointed on the screen up in the corner and it said DOD. I said, what does DOD mean? And she said, date of death.

And I said, well, how did you come up with this? And she said, all it takes is somebody to input on the computer the wrong numbers, and it just makes a big difference, of course. Most people never find out how it happens, but when the federal computer says you're dead, you might as well be. The terrible news is relayed by the government to banks and credit agencies. Judy Rivers told us she had $80,000 in her accounts, but when she tried to use a bank card at a store, they assumed she was an identity thief. You couldn't get access to your bank accounts. You couldn't get a credit card. How did you live? Well, for a time, I lived in my car, and I couldn't get an apartment. I had my debit cards, which were, of course, no good.

I used one without knowing the consequences and was actually taken to jail and questioned because they thought I was a identity thief. You ended up arrested? Yes. Ended up living in your car because of all of this? For six months. You had been eliminated from the human race? Cyber ghost. Cyber ghost. Judy Rivers now haunts a borrowed camper in Alabama. And while her finances were ruined, she found that the government makes a tidy profit, selling the death master file to credit agencies. So word of her death was nearly immortal in dozens of databases.

And it came back again and again. She protested to a credit agency called Check Systems for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, Check Systems responded to me and told me to send my information in and they would consider it. After I had sent it to them over 20 times. They would consider whether you were still alive? Correct. We looked in the Alabama Vital Records office for River's death notice, but it's not there. No one seems to know

how she got in the federal death master file. God may judge the quick and the dead, but it's the states that collect the data. They pass it along to Social Security, and there is plenty of room for error. Record bureaus get death notices from doctors, hospitals, funeral homes, or families. And every state has its own rules. Perhaps because the dead don't vote, many of the states don't spend much keeping tabs on them. This is the state of Alabama Vital Records Vault. It is a place so secure that you need a key and a fingerprint to get inside. But once in here, the technology becomes pretty 19th century.

These are death certificates from 1912, for example. All in all, there are 17 million paper records in here. Now, the state of Alabama is moving toward an electronic system, and it's about 60% of the way there. But there's so little funding around the country for that kind of transition that there are about a dozen states in America that do not have a statewide electronic filing system for death records. How accurate is the death master file? I guess the best way to say it is as accurate as it can be.

Patrick O'Carroll is the Social Security Administration's Inspector General. His office investigates how the death master file is used and abused. Right now, the death master file has in it about 86 million records in it, and it gets about 2 million records every year from the states. And we're probably, as with everything else, as strong as the weakest link in terms that some states are reporting electronically, have very good data, and then with other states, it's done on a more haphazard level. So again, there's going to be some falling through the cracks there. But O'Carroll told us that live people falling through the cracks

isn't what keeps him up at night. The much more costly problem is in the millions of Americans who do die and are not recorded. Your office found that Social Security had no death data for six and a half million people over the age of 111. Do you really believe that there are six and a half million people over the age of 111 in this country? No. And in fact, that's why we did the audit on it. What we were finding is that people that were over 112 years of age were opening up bank accounts. And that got us suspicious.

And we found that 6.5 million was not recorded as being deceased in SSA's records. How many people are over the age of 111 in this country? I'm thinking 10. Most federal agencies depend on the death master file, so if a death isn't listed, federal payments just keep coming. We wondered what that would add up to during the course of a year, but it turns out no one in the federal government is keeping an overall count. The best we could come up with was a few reports from individual agencies. For example, the Department of Agriculture paid farm subsidies and disaster assistance to more than 170,000 dead people over six years. That came to

1.1 billion dollars. The Office of Personnel Management paid dead federal retirees a little over a billion. And in 2010 alone, the IRS paid more than $400 million in refunds to the dead. Social Security doesn't know how many retirement and disability checks are cashed by the relatives of the dead, like Sandra Kimbrough. I'm a wife, a mother, a grandmother, and now a felon. Like a lot of people, she took in her aging, ill mother and had a joint bank account with her. When her mother died, the disability benefits kept coming. When did she die? She died in 1984. died the disability benefits kept coming when did she die she died 1984 when she

died did you report her death to Social Security I did not why not I thought perhaps it would have been taken care of by the funeral director at some point were you surprised that these benefits kept coming to you? No, not initially because I had had a conversation with my mom prior to her death that I would be entitled to the benefits. So I just assumed and went along with that thinking that I was entitled. And what did it come to? Over a 30-year period, $160,000. Though she took the checks for three decades, otherwise Sandra Kimbrough is no one's idea of a thief, she and her husband had good full-time jobs through retirement,

a solid middle-class life, and raised two children. But then came an unexpected call from Social Security. The investigator from Social Security must have asked where your mother was. Oh, well, I explained to him immediately. I didn't try to say that she was alive. I said that she was deceased. Social Security suspected as much because it is using a clever new tool. So we go to Medicare and see if anybody hasn't been to Medicare for three years. And if they haven't been, we then, you know, try to go out and make a phone call to them, see if they're, you know, still here. Also, we look at people that reach 100 years of age and try to reach out and see if they're, you know, doing well.

Sandra Kimbrough's mother would have been 93 and hadn't used Medicare in 30 years. Kimbrough was charged with theft, pled guilty, and is now looking at at least a year in prison. She spoke with us, she said, to warn others. I've spent 66 years, no criminal history, haven't done nothing wrong, lived a good life, did everything I was supposed to do, be a law-abiding citizen, and succumbed to this human error, and this is where I am. And obviously, felon is not compatible with the other three things that I said, but it is my reality. Inspector General Patrick O'Carroll says that Social Security is managing about 150 convictions

a year, a fraction of the total, but it adds up to about $55 million in fraud. What we're trying to do is to get the word out there is if you do take it and you're not supposed to do it, we're going to find you, we're going to arrest you, and we're going to get the money back. Over the last decade, O'Carroll has made 70 recommendations to Social Security to reform the death master file. But he says there's little sense of urgency. Is part of the problem here that in Washington, 50 or 100 million dollars a year just isn't a very big number? It's interesting you bring that up because I deal in very big numbers.

About two billion dollars go out every day. So when you start taking a look at percentages of two billion dollars, this is that what to you, me, to a general taxpayer is going to be as extremely large amounts of money, really percentage-wise is small compared to what's going out every day. As for the living who've been declared dead, Social Security told us, quote, we work very hard to correct errors when we learn of them. The agency said that its error rate is only one-third of one percent. But that still adds up to about 9,000 Americans killed off by the government each year. For them, it can be a long road to resurrection. It took Judy Rivers five years.

And today, she carries a few credit cards and something else. You carry a letter around with you. All the time. Everywhere you go. What does it say? It's from the Social Security office, and I have it updated once a month. And it says that who I am, what my Social Security number is, that I have been mistakenly declared a deceased in the past, and that that is not correct, and I'm alive and well, or at least alive.

And you have that updated every month? Every month. Why? Because when you get to about three months, people look at the date and say, well, this is old. You know, you could have died since then. Tomorrow, the U.S. Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on all of this. Senators Ron Johnson and Tom Carper will introduce a bill to ensure that improper payments to the dead stop and the living stay off the death master file.

Sometimes historic events suck. and the living stay off the death master file. 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. Now, CBS News correspondent David Martin, on assignment for 60 Minutes. Remember that old recruiting ad, the Marines are looking for a few good men? Well, now they're looking for a few good women as well. The armed services have been ordered to open all their ground combat units to women by the end of this year, or else give the Secretary of Defense a good reason why not. For the Marines, that means accepting female volunteers into their

infantry officer school to see if they can make it through the grueling three-month course. You'd expect the training to be tough, but we had no idea how tough until we saw it. The Marines have kept most of what happens in that course secret, so anyone going through it doesn't know what to expect. But they opened it up for us, so you could see what it takes to become a Marine infantry officer. Male or female, it doesn't matter because the demands are the same. Can women do it? Take a look and judge for yourself. Marine second lieutenants charging into battle on their knees. This drill comes two weeks into the 86-day infantry officer course, and it's unlike any

training we've ever seen. They're on their knees to slow things down enough so as not to cause serious injury. It looks almost prehistoric, but Marine General George Smith says it's what combat's all about. We're talking about actively seeking out and locating and closing with and then destroying the enemy. General Smith is in charge of an experiment that will put women into the middle of that scrum, which until now has been entirely a man's arena. Second Lieutenant Melissa Cooling wants to be one of those women. But before she can start infantry training, she has to pass what's known as the combat endurance test, a 14-hour marathon of physical pain and mental stress, which includes everything from

basic pull-ups to land navigation and an obstacle course. All of that spread out over 16 miles. She knows she's facing longer odds than any of the men here. In the last two years, 20 women have gone before her, and only one has passed the test. She knew what the odds were. If you look at the odds all the time, you're never going to achieve anything. So it didn't bother you that in all the previous classes exactly one woman had made it through that first day? No, that doesn't bother me because she's not me, so, and none of the other women are me. I try to not think about it as, well, I'm a girl and I'm going to perform like all the other girls. I just try and focus on performing like Melissa. At five foot two,

cooling is shoulder high to the men, but she's a born competitor, most recently as a triathlete. She also happens to have a degree in biomedical engineering and her brother who preceded her into the Marine Corps. She is one of five women starting out on this day's combat endurance test, but the only one who would let us identify her. Cooling may have to climb to get to the pull-up bar, but once there, she can gut them out. Pull-ups are supposed to be the bugaboo of all women because of upper body strength. Yeah, that's one of those myths that's out there. Women can't do pull-ups, but we have it on video now. We can do them. But can they perform all the tasks required of an infantry officer? That's the question General Smith is trying to answer.

This is the most physically demanding job, if you will, in our United States Marine Corps. Does size matter? I think size does matter, especially when you're talking about the ability to march under load. So how much does a Marine carry when he's got his combat load on? Well, it's mission dependent, but I will tell you that it very likely exceeds 100 pounds and probably gets up above 130 pounds in some cases. That's more than cooling waves, but there are no allowances for size. We could make the bars lower, David, but that's really not the issue. The issue is the realities of combat

aren't going to change based on gender. The enemy doesn't care whether you're a male or a female. And neither does the weather. With temperatures in the upper 90s, some of the men are dropping from the heat. This combat endurance test is taking place on the hottest day of the summer. And for cooling, it's made worse by injury. I rolled my ankle at the very beginning. It definitely stunk. So you just ignored it? Yep. You just ignore it and you keep moving. Others are fighting muscle cramps. But the most difficult part of the test for everyone is the mental challenge of making good decisions despite physical exhaustion.

They're not allowed to speak to each other and never know what's coming next, a written exam or a 25-foot rope climb. Fundamental to that course is that sense of uncertainty, much like combat. Do they know what they have to do to make it through that first day of the combat endurance test? They don't. So how do they know how well they're doing? They don't. That's part of the uncertainty. They don't even know how much time they have,

which makes stopping long enough to eat or drink a calculated risk. I made some poor decisions by not eating more during the test. And that's part of the test? That was the biggest part of the test that day for a lot of people, because I know there were a lot of guys in my group that are PT studs and they went down with heat cases and cramps and whatever else because they weren't eating enough. For most Marines and especially the women, the make or break point in the combat endurance test is the obstacle course. Some of the men are big enough and strong enough to sail through it. Others are struggling. Melissa Cooling gets off to a good start. I just looked up at it and I was like, alright I'm definitely gonna get this. This is mine

and I made it mine and I did a little happy dance in my head. But her strength is giving out and each obstacle seems more daunting than the last. She has to will herself up and over. Well, I stared at it for probably a solid minute, you know, working up some courage to just go for it. She finally gets her legs up, but then she comes to the toughest obstacle, that 25-foot rope. I was a little nervous about the rope because there is a part of it, too, that's your grip strength. She gets halfway up but can go no higher. So my first thought was, oh, crap. So I tried to grab onto the rope so it didn't hurt when I fell, and then I looked up.

And when you look up after you fall, it looks like it's a million-foot rope after that. How many more times did you try to get up? I think there were two more times, then that was it. Starting before dawn, we hiked all 16 miles of the combat endurance test with Major George Flynn. By the end of the day, 20 men had dropped out. And how did the women do? They pushed themselves, always saw max effort, and they hung in there. But did any of them make it through?

No, they did not. That's the combat endurance test at Quantico, Virginia. Where's our first victim? Where's our first victim? We also traveled to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina to see another experiment the Marines are conducting, this time on the enlisted side. Female privates straight out of boot camp are now given the chance to volunteer for the enlisted infantry course. That's a chance in a lifetime. And if I know I can physically make

those requirements and get myself there, I thought, why not? Nisa Jovel is a powerful enough athlete that she tried out for her high school football team, but was not allowed to play. Judging how she handles the obstacle course, you'd have to say that school missed a bet. You pretty much aced it. Thank you, sir. And you were just muscling it through. I was. And then you get to the end and you've got to go up that rope.

Yep. Muscled that too. Jovel is one of 122 women who have made it through the enlisted course. Dragon rights right here. Let's go. That's a 34% success rate compared to zero for the female officers. But the enlisted course is not as demanding. For one thing, Nisa Jovel didn't have to climb that rope with her pack on, the way Melissa Kooling did. Now you've been through this training. What's your own opinion about whether women can serve in the infantry? My opinion would be that it would be pretty difficult for them.

We're just, unfortunately, physically we're not built for it. And I'm not saying that we can't do it, what they do, but our body structure is different. So what is it really, physically, that you think? Honestly, it was really just carrying a lot of weight and learning how to move as fast as you can with it. It's what, bone density that wears you down over time? Mainly hips that affect us. Hips?

For females, yes. So how does that play out on a 15K or a 20K? We had to learn how to put on the pack a certain way to relieve the stress off of our hips. So the hip problem is definitely a big deal. Back at Quantico, the second lieutenants who made it through the combat endurance test, all of them men, are now two weeks into the 86-day infantry officer course. If he shows pain, finish him! By now, Major Scott Cuomo says

every one of them has suffered some kind of injury. There's not a guy here right now that's not hurting in some way, shape, or form. Well, you can see it. One of them, the guy broke his nose last Friday. Nobody cares. Is he going to fight today? Nobody cares.

So how would a woman do in that? I don't know, sir. We'll see. If she comes to this course and she gets to this point, she'll be treated just like the men are. So we'll see. We wanted to see what it takes to get through the rest of the course. So we flew into the mountains of the Mojave Desert in California for the final and toughest part. 85 Marines started out two and a half months ago, 59 are left, and they are 15 days from graduation. All of them are men, but we're here to see what

females would have to endure taking this final exam marine style. The packs weigh 115 pounds, not just weapons and ammunition but all the food and water the Marines will need to get them up and back down the steep mountain ridges. We're doing our best to keep up with them but we're not carrying anything close to the loads they're hauling. There are no trails up here and no relief from temperatures that hit a high of 110 degrees. Missed fire. Nicholas Boer, nicknamed Animal, has already been voted best Marine in the course,

but even he is almost done in. Today was real tough, sir. The climate change really shocks the body, and you're just sucking down water. When you've got a limited amount of it, it really, really beats you down, sir. But as the Marines like to say, nobody cares if you're tired and beaten down. How long have we had eyes on the enemy? Somewhere up here, there's an opposition force waiting to ambush them. You would expect to find rattlesnakes in a place like this. But bees? They were a relentless enemy,

going after any drop of moisture they could find on the Marines. They only sting if you swat them, but it's hard to resist the urge. Sunset brings relief from the heat and the bees, and a chance to sleep if you can find a level patch of ground. When the sun comes up, it's time for a shave and a quick meal before there's another ridge to climb and more opposition forces to outmaneuver. You can measure the toll the relentless pace of the 86-day course has taken on 2nd Lieutenant Zachary Barbero. And how big are you? Six foot two, sir, and about 170 pounds now, sir. 170 pounds now. What were you when you started? When I started IOC, I was around 200 pounds, sir. You lost 30 pounds?

Just about, sir. The Marines must decide by the end of this year whether women should serve in the infantry. That leaves just nine months for female Marines to prove they can make it through the infantry officer course. Would you change anything in that infantry officer course if you found that there was just one thing you could do to greater assure women getting through? David, I think the infantry officer course is designed just right. I mean, look around the globe today. The world is only getting messier and more complex. So we've got it right at the infantry officer course.

More Americans go to zoos every year than to professional baseball, football, hockey, and basketball games combined. We get to encounter the dangers of the wild from the safety of suburbia. But increasingly, zoos see their mission as not just displaying animals, but also saving endangered species. And that raises an interesting question. Can endangered animals born and bred in captivity be released into the wild? A conservation group called the Aspinall Foundation is trying to find out. It's run by Damien Aspinall, a multimillionaire who owns a chain of casinos in England.

But his biggest gamble involves his animals. They say that the English can be eccentric, but Damien Aspinall takes the cake. This 54-year-old likes to play tug-of-war with tigers and pet black rhinos. But gorillas are his best buddies, and wrestling with them is his favorite pastime. They're part of my family, and I'm part of their family. They see me as an intricate part of their lives. And when I look after these animals, they're my equal. Now, the tricky thing

is getting out. I'm not allowed to leave. Damien gets to do this because he oversees this 500-acre wildlife park that looks like the Serengeti, but is in Kent, England, surrounding Damien's country estates. The zoo was started by his wealthy and no less eccentric father, who liked to take a dip in the pool with the tigers and let the gorillas roam about the ground. When you were a little boy, were the gorillas your playmates? Yeah, without question. The problem being, of boy, were the gorillas your playmates? Yeah, without question. The problem being, of course, you never had any human friends because no parents would

ever let you have a play date. When Damien took over the zoo, he set out to save the species. Over 130 critically endangered Western lowland gorillas have been bred here, more than at any other zoo on earth. Also, 30 near-extinct black rhinos, 180 tigers, and 140 rare clouded leopards. But not to keep them. It wasn't long before Damien decided that zoos are immoral. They're jails that lock up the innocent for life. So his goal now is to set all the animals that were born here free. If I could extinguish all zoos over the next 30 years, including my own, I would. I wouldn't hesitate. And you don't think, as many do, that the zoo animal is an ambassador and that they educate the public, who then in turn becomes more interested in conservation.

Please show me the statistical evidence that zoos educate, and that education that they claim they're doing has helped animals in the wild. There is no evidence, because it's a lie. But if you go to a zoo, you should see the faces of children when they actually see an animal. But that's so wrong. The face should be one of disgust. That's what's so wrong. We've culturalized them. Oh, those animals are here for our pleasure.

We don't have the right as a species to take animals to pleasure our children. That disgusts me. These poor animals. So this zookeeper, who hates zoos, announced that he was going to send an entire family of zoo gorillas to Africa. A silverback named Jala, his five wives and four infants.

A project no other zoo would even consider. Why isn't anybody else doing it? Because they don't believe in it. You've got to understand, we're considered mavericks. We're actually considered a little nutty. Yeah, but that's such a good thing. It's only the nutty people who ever get anything done in this world. But these giants are actually very fragile.

They get stressed and even depressed by change, finding it hard to adapt to new environments, especially the adults. You know, people think, well, we're going to send them home to Africa. This is home. They were born here. Why would they want to go back if they're living in a cushy... Why would they want to go back? Well, because it's cushy here. So you decide that?

Well, you're deciding to send them back. Because it's where they belong. I'm not really deciding anything. They, for 50,000 years, have evolved in this forest. That's surely where they belong, not after 12 years living in a zoo. But isn't it dangerous for the animals to release them into the wild if they've been raised in a place like this,

where they're pampered and they're fed? How can they survive in the wild? Man always underestimates the intelligence of wild animals. You have to help them on their way, but if you leave them be, they'll pick it up immediately. To help them on their way, Damien created guerrilla school in his mansion's backyard, where he himself taught these English-born infants survival basics, like how to climb a tree and avoid poison berries. Still, sending a family of 10 gorillas to Africa was a massive undertaking. They had to be sedated and couriered, you couldn't make this up, by DHL.

Was that hard for you? You're basically sending your family away. Honestly, no. I'm so proud that they're going where they belong. If I didn't do it, I would not live easy within myself. The gorillas were flown to Gabon and taken by raft to this dense forest, about a million acres that he bought and turned into a national park to protect animals like the Western lowland gorillas, whose numbers keep dwindling due to habitat destruction and poaching. I'm wondering why the poachers even want gorillas. They don't have horns. They don't have ivory. Bushmeat. They'll eat the gorillas. They'll cut their hands off and sell them as ashtrays.

The babies are taken for pet trade. To keep them safe, the gorillas were taken at first to an island to acclimate. Damien's staff continued to feed them and give them medicines like malaria pills. This wasn't his first time sending gorillas here. He had already sent 12 from his zoo, but they were all babies who hadn't adapted yet to the zoo. He's taken many trips to see how they're doing. He says most of them have survived and multiplied. But on one visit that he videotaped, he was concerned about one of them, Quibi, who hadn't been seen in a long time.

And I went up the river and called for him. He obviously heard my call, and he came down to the edge of the river, and I jumped out of the boat and I went to see him and he greeted me with a fantastic gurgle, love gurgle. We sat there together and he was so sweet and introduced me to all his wives. Oh, thank you. Then when I wanted to leave, he wouldn't let me leave. He clung onto me very

tightly. He wanted me to stay, but, you know, I know the best thing for him was for me not to stay, and he's wild, and let him be wild. Now, can we see you tomorrow, okay? All right, we'll come and see you tomorrow. Looks idyllic, but conservationists we spoke to were critical of Damien, some calling his work a vanity project. Maybe it makes him feel good. He has a relationship with these animals, and he wants to do well for them, and he thinks that taking them back to Africa will be doing that. But it's not conservation.

Tara Stoinski is president of the Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund, run out of Zoo Atlanta, home to the largest collection of gorillas in North America. She says returning a handful of zoo animals can't begin to counter the vast numbers that are lost every year. So Damien's money would be better spent saving gorillas already in the wild. We need all hands on deck right now to be conserving wild populations. We need funds to be going into saving these wild places so that the animals that are living there currently can continue to survive.

You know, there's just something kind of, I think, in us, intuitively in us, that we want to see these animals roaming free. I think that humans have a very romantic notion of what the wild is like. And the wild is not a place where it is safe and animals get to roam free and make choices. They have to find food. They have to avoid predators. They have to find mates. And then you add on top of that all of the challenges that our humans are imposing,

whether it be hunting, habitat loss, disease, I think the challenges that these wild populations face are huge. One year after the silverback from Kent, Jala, and his family were sent to Gabon, we went with Damien to see how they were coping. Here we are. We snaked down the Impassa River, but there was no sign of Jala through the dense vegetation. Then, a glimpse of eyes and limbs through the trees. As our boat approached, the females and

infants came slowly into the clearing. They're so calm. It's such a beautiful thing to see. How happy do they look? But when Jala came forward, he didn't look all that happy. He knows I'm here now. He's protecting his females. He's just looking at me. But Damien was ecstatic as they settled on the grass in front of us. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. A full house.

Did you give the baby a name? Yeah, that's Aku. Aku. Damien began tossing them coconuts, sugar cane, and bananas. That's Tamki. She's calling for some. Hey. She keeps wanting more.

Yeah, so silly. She's smart, though, because she gets more than anyone else. Do you think that you have brought them home? Without any question, yeah. But they weren't totally free yet. Damien's idea was to complete this bridge only when he felt they could fend for themselves. And just over the other side of that bridge is the true wilderness.

They don't swim? No. So here they're protected because they're on an island, but once they cross the bridge, they'll come across elephants and leopards and other gorillas. Jala's going to be defending his females. He might lose some of his females. It could become very stressful. You mean other males who are there, wild, will challenge him for his females. But Damien thinks this family is ready, and so he and his crew put the final planks on the bridge. Then he tries to lure

the gorillas over with, but of course, food. Come on! Come on! Wouldn't you know it, the females venture out first, and once again, Jala follows their lead. Jala's going in. Brilliant. Oh, my goodness. And look at the babies, the second one. Oh, my gosh. That's wonderful, isn't it? That's one-year-old Aku. Within an hour, all ten had crossed over. This is the ultimate goal.

The ultimate. This is the holy grail. Although they will get over on this side and inevitably face dangers that they're not really prepared for. The problem will be is when the other males turn up here. They have been quite near in the last few days. So I suspect they are quite near. And I suspect within a few hours they'll be coming to investigate. Oh, boy.

Oh, boy. Yeah. If only we could end on an optimistic note, but we can't. A month after the gorillas crossed the bridge, Damien's team found all five adult females dead, including Tamki, as well as baby Aku, an outcome so many of Damien's critics predicted. So what does this mean for his experiment? We remembered what he said back in Kent. It may be a disaster. And if it's a disaster and they all die, all those people will jump up and down and say he was an idiot. Fine, I'm willing to take that. I don't care. I don't seek popularity. I'm the ambassador for these animals. I'm here to protect those animals and give them their chance to go back into the wild, because what I don't believe in is they should spend the rest of their lives in

captivity. Damien's best guess is that a wild male silverback attacked the family, killing some on the spot, others dying from injury infections or stress. He called it a hell of a setback, but is determined to send more gorillas into the wild. In the mail this week, viewers wrote about The Maestro, our story about the Metropolitan Opera's music director, James Levine, who believes in encouraging rather than shouting at his musicians and students. Leaders in all walks of life should take the Levine approach. Speak softly to see change embraced.

I have always dreamed of loving my job as much as Mr. Levine has. What a wonderful blessing to live, work, and love what you do. And then there was this. Please, please, please continue the music stories made so magic by Bob Simon. I'm Scott Pelley. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.