60 Minutes - 5/27/2018: Friendly Fire, The Rhino Crisis

Episode Date: May 28, 2018

On this Veteran's Day weekend -- Bill Whitaker shares a cautionary tale of how five U.S. soldiers -- including two Green Berets -- died -- when they were hit by a bomb that was dropped by an AMERICAN warplane. There's a conservative effort to protect rhinos from poachers -- who are being targeted for their horns. Lara Logan introduces us to South African rancher John Hume -- who has his own way of savings the rhinos -- on tonight's "60 Minutes." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices 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's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here? And maybe how to head them off at the pass? That's On the Media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Bullets whizzing by, kicking up all around you. All you can do at that point is return fire and hope the next one, you know, doesn't get you. Members of a special forces A-team were pinned down by the Taliban. And by the time it was over, five U.S. soldiers were killed, not by the enemy, but by American bombs. It was all of a sudden this shock moment of, oh my God, they just hit our heel. Tonight, what our 60 Minutes investigation has uncovered. When we send our soldiers into battle, it's wrong to have them using a weapon system which isn't capable of doing what it's supposed to be doing.

It's not murder, but it's close. It's so lovely to be able to be so close to a rhino. Karin Udendahl took these rhino in after another orphanage was attacked. Poachers killed two babies for their horns, and one of their caretakers was raped. Reason enough for the pistol on her hip. But Intoto has a way of lightening up any conversation. He's so naughty and he's so strong.

He's very strong. I'm Steve Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Scott Pelley. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Lara Logan. I'm Bill Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Scott Pelley. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Laura Logan. I'm Bill Whitaker. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes.

There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here and maybe how to head them off at the pass? That's On the Media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts.

On this Memorial Day weekend, with 15,000 U.S. troops still deployed to Afghanistan, we bring you a cautionary tale of how five U.S. soldiers, including two Green Berets, died there on the night of June 9, 2014. As we first reported this past November, the Pentagon concluded the deaths were an avoidable accident, known by the contradictory phrase, friendly fire. It was the deadliest such incident involving U.S. fatalities in 17 long years of ongoing war in Afghanistan. It wasn't gunfire that killed the U.S. soldiers. It was a pair of 500-pound bombs dropped right on top of them by a U.S. warplane. You're about to hear what happened that day from three of the soldiers who were there, including the Green Beret commander.

They dispute the official version of events and warn it's going to happen again. It started just after sundown on a sweltering night with a fierce firefight. Bullets whizzing by, kicking up all around you. At certain points it would die down, but it was unrelenting at other points. It looked almost like a firework shows where they were shooting down at our positions. Were you scared? Absolutely. I think you would have to be borderline insane to not have some kind of fear.

All you can do at that point is return fire and hope the next one, you know, doesn't get you. Brandon Branch was a skilled Army combat paramedic attached to the Green Berets who had dreamed since childhood of being a soldier. Communications Sergeant Henry Hank Montalbano joined the Green Berets after graduating from Williams College. And Captain Derek Anderson, the Green Beret team commander, could be a poster boy for the Army. Fluent in Arabic, at 29 he was a Bronze Star recipient in Iraq and had led more than 80 combat patrols in Afghanistan. This was supposed to be the team's final mission after a six-month deployment that started in January of 2014. Did you see much combat?

Yes. It would be pretty typical during the course of operation to take fire. We had had a long deployment. It was fairly kinetic. A lot of action. Yeah. Everyone was coming home safe. We had a few guys from our sister team that had gotten shot on a previous mission. The 10-man A-team was part of the 5th Special Forces Group from Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The group's commander called them the most disciplined, well-trained, and effective unit in Afghanistan. The Green Berets struck out from Forward Operating Base Apache,

a dusty outpost in restive Zabul province, an area dotted with beehives of Taliban fighters hidden in plain sight among the locals. We knew that this area contained Taliban and bad guys. So we understood that there was a clear possibility that we would be getting shot at at some point. Hey, hey, get down. Captain Anderson says the Taliban stepped up its attacks when the U.S. announced most of its troops would leave after the Afghan election in June. I think that the Taliban was trying to make a statement before we left. What was the mission in the Gaza Valley that day?

Our job, in conjunction with our Afghan partners, were to help the Afghans in going and clearing the Gaza Valley from 60 Minutes commissioned a scale model of the exact location where the friendly fire took place and brought these three soldiers who fought there to see it. It's surreal to see the whole landscape again, and it definitely brings up memories of that day. What's the terrain like? Steep and slippery.

Hours before dawn on June 9, 2014, giant Chinook helicopters like these dropped Captain Anderson and his 95-man task force of U.S. and Afghan soldiers into the Gaza Valley to chase away the Taliban fighters. Temperatures soared over 100 degrees as the U.S. troops shadowed their Afghan allies from rocky ridges. At the same time, radio intercepts showed the Taliban were also shadowing them. At dusk, the soldiers climbed down to take up positions near three helicopter landing zones. So the flag here, the red flag, what does that represent? So that represents where we ended up at the end of the day, getting ready for pickup from the helicopters.

Attached to Anderson's Green Beret team was an Air Force controller whose identity is classified. He was assigned to the mission just 72 hours earlier, and his job was critical, to guide Air Force planes on bombing or strafing runs against enemy positions. It's a battlefield tactic called close air support. What the Green Berets didn't know was that their new air controller had been demoted and kicked out of an Air Force Special Operations unit for poor performance.

Did you know this guy at all? Did you know anything about him? At the time, we didn't know anything. He showed up a couple days before the mission, so he was getting caught up on everything our previous Air Force controller had planned out. Half a mile away from Anderson's group was Army medic Brandon Branch and two Green Beret weapons sergeants, Jason McDonald at 28, a veteran Army Ranger, and 24-year-old Scott Studeman, the grandson of a U.S. senator

who continued a family tradition of service by becoming a Green Beret. Once we got down in this area, there was like a small ditch that actually kind of ran down through here. Just before eight in the evening, suddenly Taliban fighters began shooting down into the ditch where Brandon Branch was with Sergeant Studeman and McDonald. And then it just, it broke loose at that point. Captain Anderson watched as the firefight erupted a half mile away. From our location here, we could see the fire coming right onto them. They were just in such a vulnerable location down there.

Being on low ground in a ditch, the advantage was from the Taliban. What were you seeing, muzzle fire? I could see the tracer rounds. Where did you think the shots were coming from? At first, just somewhere in this general direction in that vicinity. You couldn't see anybody? We couldn't see anybody at the time. It was just somebody shooting. The bullets are hitting all around you. You can hear them going by? Right. Yes, sir. Were you returning fire? Absolutely. Absolutely.

Under heavy fire, Green Beret Scott Studeman scaled the hill with three other U.S. soldiers and an Afghan sergeant to take up a more defendable position. They carried a machine gun, a grenade launcher, and rifles to fight off the Taliban. Before scrambling up the hill to join the other soldiers, Sergeant Jason McDonald sounded an urgent alarm over the radio. Troops in contact. He started asking for immediate support from aircraft. It got that bad that quickly? Absolutely, sir.

Jason got on the radio and said, give me the aircraft now. You heard him say that before? No, at no point during the deployment had we ever really heard anyone with the urgency in their voice and or necessity. Honestly, what's going through my head is that we're gonna die

the plane sent to the aid of the special forces that night was a b-1 like this a high-flying strategic bomber not the type of aircraft typically used for close air support missions in afghanistan that night the b-1 had a belly full of bombs and a cylindrical tube called a sniper pod slung beneath its fuselage. A sniper pod is a precision targeting system bristling with cameras and sensors that streams images like these to the bomber's four-man crew. As darkness fell over the moonlit valley, the Green Berets switched on infrared strobes attached to their helmets and pulled night vision devices over their eyes, which allow U.S. soldiers and air crews to identify friend from foe in the chaos of the battlefield.

You can see the strobe lights. Yeah, right. And everybody's got one. Correct. So if you're looking at all of your guys out there, you're seeing lights all over the place. Yeah, I mean, I have pilot buddies and I have friends that have said it can oftentimes look like a Christmas tree in the valley. What about the B-1 bomber? Does it see the strobe lights? It cannot. Cannot? We thought it could. The classified official investigation, obtained by 60 Minutes, later concluded that everyone, the soldiers, the bomber crew, the Air Force controller, all thought the B-1 targeting system was capable of detecting infrared strobes. They were all wrong. So it was your belief that this B-1 bomber could see your strobe lights going off? Correct, yes. And, you know,

throughout any operation, we've always had the general assumption that these aircraft can. As this animation shows, the B-1 targeting system could see gunfire coming from Sergeants McDonald and Studeman, who were shooting at the Taliban from the hillside above Medic Branch. But because the plane's crew couldn't see the Green Beret's strobes, they mistook their muzzle flashes for the Taliban. And that was just one of a cascade of critical errors, according to the investigation of the incident. The report charges that in the heat of battle, Captain Anderson lost track of the soldiers who had climbed the hill to fight the Taliban. The Air Force controller with Anderson, whose job it was to pinpoint enemy targets, admitted he made a mistake

and sent conflicting positions for U.S. and enemy fighters to the bomber. The B-1 aborted its bomb run on three passes as technical glitches and the mountainous terrain garbled radio transmission. How long did that take? It ended up taking a total of 21 minutes. And all of this time you are under fire? Right. The report also revealed that as the bombers circled 12,000 feet above them,

instead of targeting the Taliban, the Air Force controller made a fatal mistake. He gave the B-1 crew the location of the U.S. soldiers as the target and, quote, improperly directed the aircraft over a friendly position. No one in the bomber challenged the air controller's conflicting positions for U.S. and enemy fighters. That should have been a red flag. The Air Force controller with the green berets radioed the bomber, be advised, friendlies are the only ones marked by IR strobes, so anybody else is enemy target. Six minutes later, he asked, any IR strobes in your sensor at this time? The bomber crew responded, negative IR strobes. The B-1 crew did have handheld night vision goggles, but they were out of range of the strobes. Finally, the B-1 released two 500-pound bombs

directly on the six soldiers at the top of the hill. And as soon as it happened, it was all of a sudden this shock moment of, oh my God, they just hit our heel. And my gut dropped. I just felt something sink to the bottom of my stomach. And I was like, no, this isn't happening. I grabbed my aid bag and I took off up the hill to try to go see if anybody had survived it and if there was anybody that needed help. And I heard, you've got to get over here. I found Scott.

What was his condition? He was in bad shape. He was talking to us at first, asking what just happened. And while we began working on him, we just told him, I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened, but something messed up. I was applying tourniquets and trying to stop what was happening, trying to stop the bleeding. There was really nothing else that I could do. I understand you said a prayer.

I just asked that God be with him and with his family. Staff Sergeant Scott Studeman died on that hilltop. Also killed, Staff Sergeant Jason McDonald, the father of two girls, 19-year-old Private First Class Aaron Toppin, Specialist Justin Helton, 25, Corporal Justin Klaus, 22, and 31-year-old Afghan Sergeant Gulbadin Saki. Over the next days, memorial services were held for the fallen soldiers at Forward Operating

Base Apache and at an airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Later, Scott Studeman and Jason McDonald were laid to rest with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Fuck! Right! Hey! Fuck! The official investigation of the accident pinned much of the blame on the Green Beret captain in our story. 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. What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie 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 the evening of June 9th, 2014. After a desperate firefight with the Taliban, two Army Green Berets and three regular Army soldiers were dead. But they were killed by an Air Force bomber that was supposed

to be coming to their aid. The Pentagon appointed then Air Force Major General Jeffrey Horigian to investigate the friendly fire accident. After an eight-week probe, the General issued a report that concluded the incident was avoidable, and he spread the blame around to the Air Force controller, to the bomber crew, and to the Army Green Berets. Let me go over some of the findings. It says, quote, though this was a challenging set of circumstances, had the team executed standard tactics, techniques, and procedures and communicated effectively, this incident was avoidable. What do you think of that statement? I disagree with that statement. But the investigation singled out Captain Anderson, who had led his team on more than

80 combat missions in Afghanistan, for especially tough criticism. It charged that he lost track of his men and that his failures, quote, caused him to misidentify friendly forces as enemy. They said you didn't know that five of the members had moved up the hillside and that you should have. Sort of a major point in the investigation. I think that's an untrue statement. Anderson told us the soldiers on the hill were within what he thought was their standard security perimeter. Do you bear any responsibility for what happened? I'm the commander of this team. This is my team. I miss my guys tremendously. But at the end of the day, there's nothing that myself or my team sergeant did that day or failed to do that day that caused that incident to happen.

There's a thousand different things that can happen during firefight missions. We made the decisions which we thought were best at the time on the ground for the guys that were getting shot at. The report goes on to say that from you, there was a sense of urgency to drop the bombs that was perhaps unnecessary. So in other words, you were making this seem like it was a bigger deal than it actually was. I was there. It was a big deal. They called it a false sense of urgency. They can call it that, but they weren't there.

21 minutes is an eternity when you're being shot at. It's ignoring some of the fundamental reasons why this occurred. They looked at the wrong things. Right. Yes. The root cause of the friendly fire incident hasn't been adequately addressed yet. There's an aircraft carrying out close air support missions that can't detect the common marking mechanism at nighttime. It's dangerous to use an aircraft that is incapable of picking up infrared strobes.

The families of the fallen soldiers were briefed by a team of five officers led by General Harrigian. One of those gold star parents was Woody Studeman, an economics professor at California's Occidental College and the father of Green Beret Staff Sergeant Scott Studeman. Studeman interviewed all but two of his son's teammates and has methodically and repeatedly reviewed every line of the declassified investigative report in a personal quest to understand how and why his son died. Were you satisfied with the investigation? How can a pair be satisfied with an investigation into their son's death when the basic cause hasn't been corrected. And that is that the B-1 bomber, Sniper Pod, was not capable of seeing the strobes that

the Green Berets were wearing, so they dropped the bombs. In a Skype interview from his headquarters in Qatar, we asked General Harrigian, who led the investigation, why the bomber crew didn't know their targeting system could not see infrared strobes on the soldiers' helmets. How is it possible that the air crew didn't know what their plane was capable or incapable of doing. They should have known, quite frankly. That's part of the academics that are given to them. So it was there, but the crew didn't remember that. The ground crew should have known just as well that their IR strobe could not be seen by a sniper pod.

Yet the general's own report says, quote, these capabilities were not specifically covered in sniper academics. In other words, Air Force bomber crews were not taught that their targeting system can't detect infrared strobes. General Harrigian, who was promoted and is now in charge of all Air Force operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, says the command sent an urgent bulletin to all its air crews 11 days after the incident to ensure they understand the capability and limitations of their aircraft's sensors to detect strobes.

Still, the Air Force general insists the B-1 is not to blame. He faults the people on the ground, the Air Force controller, and the Green Berets for failing to keep track of each other and accurately communicate their positions to the bomber. The individuals on the ground have a responsibility, have a duty to know where their teammates are. And they're the ones that are communicating that information to the air crew. Could that discrepancy have been overcome if the crew had been able to see the infrared strobes. Without a doubt.

People say that this incident proves that, that the B-1 is not suited for that kind of close air support. This incident had nothing to do with the platform. This incident had everything to do with the platform. This incident had everything to do with the humans involved with what happened here. I think that when humans are under fire in fear for their lives and they make mistakes, that's different from a government not understanding the capabilities of the weapon systems that it sends out to help our troops. Studeman is convinced the B-1 targeting system is responsible for his son's death. None of the other mistakes mattered.

None of them mattered. When we send our soldiers into battle, it's wrong to have them using a weapon system which isn't capable of doing what it's supposed to be doing. It's not murder, but it's close. Woody Studeman wanted to speak to us on camera because he fears a similar mistake will happen again. His dead son's comrades agree and told us the report's criticism of Captain Anderson was unjust. If I got a phone call today that said, you have got to go back to Afghanistan, these were the guys that I would want to be back with. If they had messed up to the level that that report says that they messed up,

I would not want to do that. Captain Anderson's role in the accident effectively ended his Green Beret career, even though his commanding general concluded he did not deserve to be punished. He left the Special Forces and is now a law student at Georgetown University. Anderson still serves in the Army National Guard. Hank Montalbano, who was held blameless by the investigation, also left the Green Berets. He's about to graduate from business school at the University of Washington. Brandon Branch, who was also not faulted in the report, was medically retired due to injuries he sustained in Afghanistan. He lives in Louisiana.

The air controller who gave the bomber the wrong target coordinates was stripped of his combat qualifications. He transferred to the Air National Guard and helped manage rescue helicopters after Hurricane Harvey last year. The B-1 air crew, after retraining, was cleared to fly again. As for the bomber's targeting system, it still can't detect infrared strobes. It's been three years. Do you ever stop thinking about that day? There was a time frame after that day that it literally almost destroyed me. And that, for a long time, it ate at me. And while I still think about that every day, while I still see that every day,

I think it would do them injustice for me to live my life in that moment every day. You fear what happened to you could happen again? Yes. All of you? Absolutely. Absolutely. We still have U.S. service members throughout the world in harm's way that are going to rely on this aircraft again. And that's what disheartens me. That's what scares me. That's what I'm mad about, that we haven't fixed a problem that could potentially kill more of our service members. Since our story first aired this past November,

the Air Force sent a squadron of B-1 bombers back to the region to fly missions over Afghanistan. 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. We think of the rhinoceros lumbering through the bush on its tank-like body, a magnificent if cumbersome creature of the wild. But in South Africa's parks and game reserves, rhino are being slaughtered at the rate of three a day, targeted by poachers who want their horns. Tonight we'll show you an unusual and controversial plan to save the rhino by removing them from the wild and instead farming them like cattle. It's quite a departure from another solution to the rhino crisis we showed you last December,

which was aimed at keeping them in their natural habitat. Doing that required something unusual and unforgettable, an airlift, which is how we started our earlier report. Take a black rhino weighing nearly a ton after it's been darted and sedated. A young female, probably about six or seven years old. Attach four leg straps to a 130-foot chain. Now it's ready to go. And lift it underneath a half-century-old Huey helicopter.

Yeah. Look at that. Oh, my God. Huey helicopter. For 15 years, this airlift has been veterinarian Jacques Flamand's way to increase the number of black rhino in the wild, moving them to new locations in South Africa. It's helping, but this elaborate version of catch and release comes with its own risk. The downside of that is that we're spreading them to areas where they might be poached. We feel great, we've caught some rhinos, yes, we're going to put them in a new place. Will they be safe? That's always the big question.

And nowhere is safe, sadly. So why is that? Well, because there is that stupid demand for rhino horn. The rhino horn is made of nothing more than keratin, the main component in human fingernails. Yet in Vietnam and China, the horn is prized as a folk remedy for hangovers and a way to increase virility. Ground into powder, it can be worth more by the ounce than gold. South Africa's poaching crisis began in 2008 when 83 rhino were killed. The government banned the sale of rhino horn in response, but poaching skyrocketed. And for the past five years,

more than a thousand rhino have been slaughtered every year. The rhino's got the answer to its survival. We've just got to help it use it. And the answer is the horn. The only answer that the rhino's got is the horn. South African rancher John Hume has an answer to the poaching crisis. And it's surreal. A rhino farm. Here you see two types of rhino species, black and white, some dehorned, some half-horned,

all lining up on schedule for their daily feed, ready for a tractor to bring them a mix of grass and grains. Not all want to share. It seems as far from the wild as you can get. They're fed and bred like livestock. There's just something about seeing those rhinos come to the feeding troughs that can seem can look unnatural my rhinos are making a certain amount of sacrifices in saving their species from extinction john hume started with one rhino 25 years ago. Now he's got more than 1,500. The largest private herd in the world. Rhinos are fairly user-friendly, especially white rhinos.

Because they adapt quickly? Yes, if you treat them properly. Your rhino are breeding faster than they do in the wild. Just treat them right and they'll breed. And that's what we should be doing. That's John Hume the businessman talking. The one who made his fortune in resort hotels and who now harvests rhino horn as a cash crop.

He's not the only one to remove the horns. It's common practice these days in South Africa, so there's nothing to poach. It's painless for the rhino, there are no nerve endings, and the horn grows back in a few years. Most rhino owners have stockpiles. What sets John Humes apart is size, six tons. It could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. But to protect his herd and his stockpile from poachers takes a small, well-armed security force, a helicopter for surveillance,

and the latest high-tech gear, including thermal cameras. That's costing him two million a year. And he said he's going broke. I don't have the wherewithal to raise a huge amount of money other than sell the rhino horn. That's the only method I have. He couldn't sell rhino horn until last year when he sued the South African government to lift the ban and won.

John Hume argued legal sales would flood the market, drive down the price and force poachers out of business. He compares it to America before prohibition was repealed. All you did was build up a black market and the criminals of the world, the Al Capones of the world, were very, very active when you tried to ban alcohol in America. Now we've done the same thing with Rhino Horn. It's created criminals. It's pushed the price through the roof. Bans have never worked.

Are you really doing this to save the rhino, or are you doing this to make money? And those two goals just happen to coincide in your view. Well, it would be wonderful if they did coincide, but I don't think they will. Why not? I don't think the price of rhino horn will even get to $10,000 a kilo. I think it'll be more like $5,000 a kilo. And if I got $5,000 a kilo for my rhino horn, it would maybe just pay the running costs. Maybe. The idea of putting a price tag on rhino horn or calling his farm the best hope for the survival of the

species has made John Hume a detested figure in the conservation community. Just ask Jacques Flamand. You know, God forbid, you know, if one day we all go to John Hume and say, please give us some rhinos to restock our game reserves, I mean, that would be a really sad day. What about the bigger debate over legalizing rhino horn?

The arguments are that if you make it legal, the price will go down and it will stop syndicates being interested in marketing it. But I don't for a moment believe it will stop rhino horn poaching. You know, it's legal to trade in cattle, but you still get cattle rustling. It hasn't stopped theft of any sort. What do you do?

Do you continue the way it is now? We just have to stop the demand. But in Asia, where we are powerless, we've just got to stop people wanting it. Is John Hume right? Is he wrong? What do you think? You've got to start somewhere. Every private owner is in favor. Dave Cooper is the government's chief veterinarian in this area, and he's worked side by side with Jacques Flamand for years. They agree on most things, but not on how to end poaching. I believe we're going to have to compromise. Even if you don't like it? Even if you don't like it. And given how close you are to the rhinos, people would expect you to be, you know be dead set against it.

If there are private rhino owners who want to dehorn their rhino, and dehorn not for security reasons, but dehorn in order to supply a market, then that's up to them. At least we have live rhino running around. These babies are the collateral damage from poaching. Makosi, Isimiso and Intoto should be in the wild. Instead, they're in this rhino orphanage. There's also Charlie, a baby hippo who just thinks he's a rhino. Karin Udendal runs the orphanage. She asked us to keep its location a secret. It's so lovely to be able to be so close to a rhino, but it's also something so sad and

tragic about it. The saddest part about having to put an orphanage together is that we're failing, because why are we having to put orphanages together to care for orphaned rhino? It means that we're not winning the rhino war. It's quite depressing because, you know, when is it going to end? Karin Udendal took these rhino in after another orphanage was attacked. Poachers killed two babies for their horns, and one of their caretakers was raped. Reason enough for the pistol on her hip. But Ntoto has a way of lightening up any conversation.

He's so naughty and he's so strong. He's very strong. He's very strong. So you can smell the cubes and he's like, come on. Why aren't you giving them to me? Karin Udendal also runs a private park where south africa's big game is on full display the rhino here are tougher to spot they prefer hiding in the bush there are herbivores and some use their horns to get to the leaves and grass and thorns that are their main source of food in the wild.

For security, Udendal won't reveal how many rhino are there, only that they've lost 15 to poachers in the last four years. The rest have been de-horned reluctantly. Rhinos have horns because they're rhino and now we're having to take something that's so much part of their identity away from them because of human greed. It's the defining characteristic of a rhino. Absolutely. Unfortunately, it's something that we have to do to keep them alive. Keeping her rhino alive means spending 75% of her budget on security.

Like John Hume, she could use the money selling the rhino horns would bring in. Karin Udendal relies on Ufundizi Intanzi to monitor every rhino at the game park. He said the poachers are mostly local, employed by organized crime groups. We asked him if he felt threatened by the poachers. We are scared of poachers, and it's very tricky because it's somebody you don't know, or it's somebody who could be in your community, and that's why we're very wary of them,

because it could be your neighbor. Why do people poach? I think that's the we're very wary of them, because it could be your neighbor. Why do people poach? I think that's the biggest problem we have, is that people know the value or what they can get for the horn, and they end up doing it out of desperation. Just beyond the gates of the game park, it's the lack of jobs and opportunity that drives people into poaching. They make a fraction of what the

horn sells for in Asia, but enough to help a family here live for months. The poachers could be all but gone if John Hughes' plan works, driven away by the legal sale of cheaper rhino horn. He believes he can save the species from extinction by having his rhino give up life in the wild. Some would say that's a big sacrifice. Well, then they should be even more grateful to my rhinos if the sacrifice is big, because I'm telling you, we are losing the war. And you know Einstein's saying, to go on doing the same thing over and over and expect a different answer is insanity. And that's what we are doing at the rhino's cost. 50 seasons of 60 Minutes.

Tonight, from Memorial Day weekend 2005, Andy Rooney had some thoughts on the meaning of the holiday. Tomorrow's Memorial Day, the day we have set aside to honor by remembering all the Americans who have died fighting for the thing we like most about our America, the freedom we have to live as we please. No official day to remember is adequate for something like that, too formal. It gets to be just another day on the calendar. No one would know from Memorial Day that Richie M., who was shot through the forehead coming onto Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944,

wore different color socks on each foot because he thought it brought him good luck. No one would remember on Memorial Day that Eddie G. had promised to marry Julie W. the day after he got home from the war, but didn't marry Julie because he never came home from the war. But the men, boys really, who died in our wars deserve at least a few moments of reflection during which we consider what they did for us. They died. Because I was in the Army during World War II, I have more to remember on Memorial Day than most of you. I had good friends who were killed. I won't think of them anymore tomorrow, Memorial Day, than I think of them any other day of my

life. Remembering doesn't do the remembered any good, of course. It's for ourselves, the living. I wish we could dedicate Memorial Day not to the memory of those who have died at war, but to the idea of saving the lives of the young people who are going to die in the future if we don't find some new way, some new religion maybe, that takes war out of our lives. That would be a Memorial Day worth celebrating. I'm Bill Whitaker. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes. There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster,

the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here, and maybe how to head them off at the pass? That's On the Media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts.