60 Minutes - 8/26/2018: The Fighter, Collateral Damage, The Harvard Lampoon

Episode Date: August 27, 2018

Arizona Senator John McCain died Saturday -- 24 hours after his family announced that he would discontinue cancer treatments. Lesley Stahl looks back on the life of the longtime senator and American hero. As the U.S. steps up the fight against Chinese theft of U.S. trade secrets and intellectual property -- Bill Whitaker reports on the many Americans wrongly accused of espionage-related crimes. Plus -- Jon Wertheim gets an inside look at the Harvard Lampoon. Those stories 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

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. 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. Since the diagnosis, you've never once had that, I guess, that feeling in your stomach of panic? No, no, no. I have feelings sometimes of fear of what happens. But as soon of people that stand up and say, this guy, he served his country. Before you put handcuffs on someone and take them away,

you've got to make sure that you've got your case together and that the facts add up. And in these cases? Facts didn't add up. The U.S. government has launched aggressive investigations and a greater number of prosecutions to stop the theft of American trade secrets by suspected Chinese spies. But we've discovered the dragnet is ensnaring a growing number of Americans who aren't spies at all. Harvard's class of 2018 is likely to include leading cancer doctors, future hedge fund titans, tech entrepreneurs, and professional wisecrackers.

For more than a hundred years, this castle in Cambridge, part secret society, part writing room, has housed the Harvard Lampoon, which continues to produce some of the great comic minds in America. Honestly, Smithies, I don't know why Harvard even bothers to show up. Tonight, we'll take you inside. I'm Steve Croft. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Scott Pelley.

I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Bill Whitaker. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. Yesterday, Senator John McCain died, four days short of his 82nd birthday. He faced death the way he faced life, with valor, honor, and integrity. John McCain served his country for over 60 years as a naval officer, a prisoner of war, a congressman, a six-term senator, and a presidential candidate. Over that time, he became a national treasure, occasionally ornery and profane,

but a politician who placed principle over party and earned his reputation as a fighter and a maverick. In July 2017, Senator McCain learned he had glioblastoma, a deadly and unforgiving brain cancer. Our Leslie Stahl joined him for some straight talk about how he lived his life and faced his death. Last summer, he invited us to his ranch just outside of Sedona, Arizona. 24 acres of old growth trees, a family of hawks, and a rippling creek that his dog Burma likes to swim in. I'm wondering if when you're up here, if it's like medicine.

Oh yeah, oh yeah. It puts everything in perspective. He and his wife Cindy raised four children. They survived two grueling presidential campaigns, a battle against melanoma, and then this. You're taking both radiation and chemotherapy. You look terrific. How is this possible? I feel fine, and I'm eating everything that she makes me eat, all of which, none of which is any good. One criteria to feeding people under my situation, it has to taste lousy. He has been through so much in the torture and you were put in solitary confinement. He's always been the indestructible man. Crashed two airplanes. Crashed in two airplanes and walked away.

Is he still the indestructible man to you? I'm still in disbelief that this actually has happened, and then I think, you know, cancer chose the wrong guy because it's not going to happen here. Determined to stay in the arena, Senator McCain resumed his duties in Washington. You'd never have known it, but he started his days with chemo and radiation

and then headed off to a full day of work. Come on, guys. Including chairing hearings of the Armed Services Committee. As leaders of our Navy, you must do better. I am more energetic and more engaged as a result of this because I know that I've got to do everything I can to serve this country while I can. Now, you have the same cancer that Ted Kennedy had. Yes. Does what he experienced go through your mind? Oh, yeah.

I think about Ted a lot. Ted stayed at his job, kept working, kept going, even when he was in a wheelchair. And he never gave up because he loved the engagement. The senator first learned he had a problem in Arizona last July when doctors found a blood clot over his left eye after a routine checkup at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix. He was driving back to the ranch when he got word. I was driving up here and I got about two-thirds of the way up and my doctor called and said, you got to come back. And I said, hey, today is Friday. I'll just come in on Monday. And she said, no, you have to come now. It's very serious. You turned the car around

and went immediately into surgery. Yes. They thought it was serious enough that they had to act immediately. And before the blood clot operation, did they mention glioblastoma to you? Yes. But as you know, doctors are interesting. They cover themselves. I kept saying to them, tell it to me straight. Well, there's always this, there's always that. And I said, I can take it. Just tell me. And then they were more forthcoming.

Five days after the surgery, lab results confirmed he had glioblastoma, the brain cancer that took his life. What did they tell you about the prognosis? That it's very serious, that the prognosis is very, very serious. Some say 3%, some say 14%. You know, it's a very poor prognosis. So I just said, I understand. Now we're going to do what we can, get the best doctors we can find, and do the best we can.

And at the same time, celebrate with gratitude a life well lived. Was he that tough? Yes, he really. He really was. Yep. Just 11 days after his surgery, he returned to Washington against doctors' advice for the vote to repeal Obamacare. You walk out onto the Senate floor.

You thought it was going to be normal, empty, mostly empty. And the entire Senate was there. They stand up. They give you an incredible ovation. What went on inside? Oh, I got very choked up. And then, of course, you know, all of them coming over and giving me a hug. It was deeply moving.

I had never seen anything like that. So you get all this affection. and then you give them this speech, kind of scolding to the people who just stood up and loved you. This was a speech condemning the way the Senate has been operating. We're getting nothing done, my friends. We're getting nothing done. Because we keep trying to find a way to win without help from across the aisle. Two days later, as the repeal Obamacare vote was underway, McCain was subjected to urgent lobbying by Vice President Pence and the president himself over the phone.

And yet, at 1.29 a.m., McCain delivered the dramatic and decisive thumbs down as a dejected majority leader Mitch McConnell bowed his head. It was a huge defeat for President Trump, who had mocked McCain's Vietnam war record. He's not a war hero. He's a war hero. He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured. OK, there are some people who think that part of your no was to get back at the president and that the thumbs down was kind of more like a middle finger to him. If I took offense at everybody who has said something about me or disparaged me or something like that, life is too short. You've got to move on. And on an issue of this importance to the nation, for me to worry about a personal relationship, then I'm not doing my job.

But the fact is his personal relationship with the president had been fraught. Last summer he wrote an op-ed saying the president is quote often poorly informed and can be impulsive. Do you worry that he's not fit for the office? First of all I believe in our system. The American people selected Donald Trump to be president United States. We have to respect that. Second of all, he has a very strong national security team around him who I know has a significant influence over him. How would you describe how the president is handling his job so far? Well, I think he's handling it in a fashion that is unfortunately not predictable. The one thing your friends and your enemies want is a predictable path. He changes his statements almost on a daily basis.

I don't know what he's going to do tomorrow or say tomorrow. Did he ever apologize for saying you're not a hero? No. If the president wanted to have a rapprochement with you, would you be receptive? Of course. Of course. I've supported him on national security. But personal. I'm talking about man to man. Sure. I'd be glad to converse with him. But I also understand that we're very different people, different upbringing, different life experiences.

What do you mean by that, and what does it make you think about? He is in the business of making money, and he has been successful, both on television as well as Miss America and others. I was raised in a military family. I was raised in the concept and belief that duty, honor, country is the lodestar for the behavior that we have to exhibit every single day. The son and grandson of four-star admirals, he was the first to admit he was an imperfect man. That's when they captured you. Yeah. Though he made they captured you. Yeah.

Though he made real sacrifices for his country. When you think about your horrible time as a POW, the torture and everything, do you relive it? Or has it now faded so much that you can almost see it as if it happened to someone else. Listen, the joy of my life was the bonds that were forged between me and my fellow POWs. They were wonderful. We fought together. We loved each other. We would tap on the walls to each other.

I look back on that experience with a great deal of pride. Do you think that this diagnosis has changed you? No. Not at all? No. Same person? No. I think you've got to, you know, you just have to understand that it's not that you're leaving, it's that you've stayed. I celebrate what a guy who stood fifth from the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy has been able to do. I am so grateful. Every night when I go to sleep, I am just filled with gratitude. Since the diagnosis, you've never once had that, I guess, that feeling in your stomach of panic? No, no, no. I have feelings sometimes of fear of what happens.

But as soon as I get that, I say, wait a minute, wait a minute. You've been around a long time, old man. You've had a great life. You've had a great experience. I want, when I leave, that the ceremony is at the Naval Academy and we just have a couple of people that stand up and say, this guy, he served his country. Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling.

History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping, history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America, decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck, available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Espionage orchestrated by China to rip off American trade secrets and intellectual property has been declared a national security emergency by the U.S. Justice Department, costing our economy hundreds of billions of

dollars a year. The Obama administration launched a new strategy to fight back with more aggressive investigations and a greater number of prosecutions, an effort that's intensified under President Trump. But as we first reported in 2016, we have discovered the dragnet isn't just catching Chinese spies. It's ensnaring a growing number of Americans who aren't spies at all. It was so urgent, the pounding was so urgent that I ran here to open the door without even being fully dressed. In May of 2015, the FBI paid an early morning visit to scientist Shaoxing Shi at his home in suburban Philadelphia. So I open the door, and so I see a lot of people outside. They have on bulletproof vests? Yes, they did, yeah, and with guns. Shi was chair of the Temple University Physics Department, but the FBI was convinced he was a spy, passing high-tech American secrets to China.

He was stunned when agents burst in and handcuffed him. Did you have any idea what was going on? Why they were here? No, I had absolutely no idea. So the very first thing that went through my mind was, this must be a mistake. Xi couldn't believe this was happening to him in the U.S. He was born in China and raised during the Cultural Revolution, a time when families feared an unexpected knock on the door. His father, a government official, was taken away to a forced labor camp. As an adult, Xi came to the U.S. to live and work in a free country. Why did you become an American citizen?

My children were born in this country. My home is in this country. My career is in this country. So it's just feel natural that I should become a citizen. Xi established himself as a world leader in the study of superconductors that could help improve MRIs. He managed nine government research projects and more than a million dollars in federal funding. So this is your lab? Yes, this is my lab.

One of your labs? One of my labs, yes. The arrest had a swift impact. Temple told him to stay home. He was removed as the principal investigator of his own research. What's going through your mind? So I was saying to myself, they're going to put me in jail. And all these things that I've been working for years was coming to an end. So tell me about the day you were arrested. My life was turned upside down. Sherry Chen's life also was turned upside down when federal

prosecutors suspected her of spying for China. She's been a U.S. citizen for two decades and has devoted her career to public service as a flood forecaster in the state of Missouri and most recently with the National Weather Service in Ohio. You were proud of your work. Yeah, I do. I really put my heart into my work. Chen showed us the award she won for helping to save the city of Cairo, Illinois, from record flooding in the spring of 2011. Armed with her forecast, the Army Corps of Engineers blew up a levee and rerouted floodwaters. What did you feel about that when Cairo was spared? I'm proud of that. My knowledge, my work can really protect the properties and saving people's lives. But three years later, Chen says FBI agents marched her out of her office in handcuffs. I saw my co-workers all looking through the windows and watched me being taken away.

I think prosecutors are feeling pressure to bring these cases. I think investigators are excited about bringing cases that may be high profile. Attorney Peter Zeidenberg is a former federal prosecutor who represented both Xiao Xingxi and Sherry Chen. He believes both American citizens are collateral damage in the government's ongoing war against Chinese economic espionage. That fear of Chinese economic espionage, it's not unfounded. No, I'm not suggesting that it is.

What I'm suggesting is, notwithstanding that fact, before you put handcuffs on someone and take them away, you've got to make sure that you've got your case together and that the facts add up. And in these cases? Facts didn't add up. Shao-Hsing-Shi faced a Justice Department narrative worthy of a spy thriller. Prosecutors accused him of collaborating with various government entities in China, of scheming for years to obtain revolutionary American technology, prosecutors accused him of collaborating with various government entities in China,

of scheming for years to obtain revolutionary American technology, and emailing photos and blueprints of that technology to the Chinese. Specifically, this American-made device called a pocket heater. It's used to make a superfine coating that maximizes the flow of electricity. In exchange, prosecutors said he would be showered with money, property, and prestige in China. The very first words coming out of my mouth was, that's absurd. That's really absurd. Why?

It turns out the device Xi was discussing with his Chinese academic counterparts wasn't a pocket heater. It was a completely different heating device that Xi was developing. He'd planned to share it in scientific publications. It was an earlier generation of this one. Is this in any way similar to the pocket heater that we've been talking about? Not at all. It is very different from the pocket heater that we've been talking about? Not at all. It is very different from the pocket heater. So when it comes to the science, it sounds like the federal investigators flat out got it wrong. That's correct. And then there's this. Prosecutors allege that Xi's

collaboration with Chinese scientists was somehow sinister. In reality, it was mandated by one of his grants from the National Science Foundation. So your funding was dependent on your working with Chinese scientists? Yes, yes, absolutely. So one arm of the government wants you to collaborate and the other arm of the government says it's a crime? Indeed, indeed, yes. Yet he faced 80 years in prison.

What was that like? It put a lot of stress. And this daily stress sometimes becomes strikingly unbearable. So I remember pleading with my family, let's try not to fold. If we hold on, we have the truth. If we fold, we will have nothing. Four months after she's arrest, his lawyer, Peter Zeidenberg, pointed out the inconsistencies to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia. Three weeks later, they dropped the case. Zeidenberg sees disturbing parallels with Sherry Chen's case.

So how did she get in trouble? The story started when she went to China to visit her parents. She had a somewhat happenstance meeting with a former classmate of hers, a vice minister in the water ministry. The vice minister asked Chen how the U.S. pays for dam repairs. Did you think there was anything, I don't know, secretive about that information? It never crossed my mind. It's not a secret. When Chen got back to Ohio, she asked her boss for publicly available information,

which she did send to her former classmate. She also searched this government database. Since she wasn't a regular user, Chen borrowed a password from her colleague. Sharing passwords was common in the office. She never sent information from the database to China, but federal prosecutors charged Chen with illegally accessing and stealing restricted information. Prosecutors also charged her with lying about the password. Chen initially denied that a colleague had emailed it to her, but she remembered after investigators showed her the email.

Her colleague, Ray Davis, initially forgot too. He wasn't charged with misremembering or failing to remember giving her the password. He only remembered it when they showed him the email, and he said, literally, oh, God, that was almost a year ago. I forgot all about that. Wasn't that Sherry's reaction as well? It was. Why the disparate reactions from the government?

You know, the fact is Sherry Chen is a Chinese-American, and her colleague was Caucasian. And with Sherry, everything she did, they looked at as somehow nefarious or somehow corrupt. You say it was forgetfulness, and they say it's a lie. Yeah, but to others, it's normal. You can forget something. For me, it is a crime. Chen faced 40 years in prison for lying about the password and accessing the database. The week before the trial, Zeidenberg took his

case to Carter Stewart, who was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Ohio. The next day, Stewart dropped the charges. In 2016, we found the Justice Department had won convictions in at least 14 cases related to Chinese economic espionage in the previous four years. It had lost a case at trial. Charges were dropped against five Chinese-born scientists who are American citizens. The fact that they will suspect us stealing secret for China is very offensive. We're American. More than 40 members of the 114th Congress called on the Justice Department to conduct an independent investigation of whether Xi and Chen were targeted because of race.

The Justice Department denied it and didn't speak to us on camera, but in a statement said, we investigate and prosecute individuals based on known or suspected criminal activities or threats to national security, not based on race, ethnicity, or national origin. Chinese theft of American trade secrets is a real problem. Excuse me, can I help you? The FBI made this video to alert agents, prosecutors, and the public. The agency says it's based on real events. Go, go! FBI, FBI!

There are a ton of ways the government can come at you. It's all having a chilling effect. Some of the most prominent Chinese Americans started holding seminars around the country to caution scientists that activities they consider innocent could look like espionage. If you're going to take something and give it as part of a talk at Beijing University or something, you've got to think twice, because some people might look at that as being nefarious. A year after her case was dropped,

Sherry Chen was fired from her job for untrustworthiness, lack of candor, and other issues stemming from her criminal investigation. So why won't the National Weather Service give you your job back? I don't know. I'm a dedicated worker. I didn't do anything wrong. And I love my job.

In an email, her employer said the facts fully support the action taken in this case. Chen has appealed. After spending about $200,000 to clear his name, Shaoxing Shi was welcomed back at Temple University, though he wasn't reinstated as chair of the physics department. He worries that lingering suspicions could jeopardize future government funding, the lifeblood of his work. Do you think the U.S. government owes you an apology? I do think so. I didn't do anything wrong, but my family and myself had to go through this. I think we deserve some kind of apology.

And, you know, it's not over, right? The scars from this traumatic experience is so deep that it's going to be with us for the rest of our life. Professor Shi is now suing the FBI, the Justice Department, and the NSA for violating his constitutional rights. In May, three and a half years after her arrest, Sherry Chen won her job back. A federal judge ordered her reinstated with back pay plus interest, concluding that Chen had been the victim of, quote, gross injustice. The federal government is appealing that decision.

It sounds like the setup for a joke. At an illustrious Ivy League university, famous for taking itself seriously, one student magazine staff devotes itself to publishing parody, pulling pranks, and causing general mayhem. Yet here's the punchline. 142 years after its founding, the Harvard Lampoon remains as relevant as ever, the wellspring of so much comedy in America today. Over the years, the Lampoon has changed in some ways. A longtime male preserve, three of its last five presidents have been women. In other ways, it's stayed true to its roots, poking fun at the powerful, including the current occupant of the Oval Office, the recent victim of a sly Lampoon prank. While their straight-laced and straight-faced classmates may aspire to become Supreme Court justices, hedge fund titans, and cures of cancer,

for a core group of Harvard undergrads, the Lampoon offers vocational training for careers as comedy writers. As we first reported earlier this year, we got a rare glimpse inside the place and caught up with some of the Lampoon's cast of characters, past and present. A winter night in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As the temperature drops, a line of undergraduates forms outside the castle at 44 Bow Street. This is the headquarters of the Harvard Lampoon, part comedy magazine, part secret society. And these students want in. Akin to rushing a fraternity, the pledges are called compers,

for the competencies they'll have to demonstrate before landing a spot on the magazine staff and literally scoring keys to the castle. The first test, can they make their upperclassmen judges laugh? Make room for the cameraman, please. Our cameras were invited into the castle library to watch upperclassmen put compers on the spot. And right off the bat, Lampoon staffers seized the opportunity to poke fun at us, too. Using a fake microphone, they subjected compers to spoof TV news interviews.

Prodding them to tell their best stories and playfully reminding them of our presence. 30 minutes, I had a bottle of whipped cream with me. Wait, 30 minutes or 60 minutes? It took up. But the real criteria for admission here, applicants must be funny on paper. They submit six pieces of humor writing

to be critiqued by Lampoon members, including Liana Spiro, the current Lampoon president. It's a whole semester of writing comedy and then having other people earnestly read it and spend a lot of time telling you what they think about it. I believe in it strongly. I think people are funnier by the end. But only the funniest survive. Out of about 100 pledges last semester, six compers made the cut.

The semester before that, only three. The initiated will see their name on the masthead of the Harvard Lampoon, an eclectic periodical full of original illustrations and niche advertising. One recent issue on the theme Just Friends, those two words no college kid ever wants to hear, includes a dialogue piece on chance encounters, a comic about phone etiquette, and, in a typical random beat, an ode

to TV meteorologists. The Lampoon is published five times a year, with a circulation barely extending beyond Harvard's gates. Members are under no illusions about the magazine's impact. There's a sense here that we are writing the magazine for ourselves and that no one is reading it, and that, I think, actually is one of the most beautiful things about The Lamp sense here that we are writing the magazine for ourselves and that no one is reading it. And that, I think, actually is one of the most beautiful things about the Lampoon, that we feel like no one is watching and we can just dance however we want. You're doing this for yourself, not the kid across the hall or the kid at the dining hall. Yeah. We could print, you know, five copies of the magazine and it would still be worthwhile and I think everyone would still be here just as much, trying to be just as funny.

Officially, members major in everything at Harvard from math to poetry, but the Lampoon is their real area of concentration. Take Alice Zhu, philosophy student and former Lampoon president. What percent of your time here at Harvard is devoted to Lampoon versus regular schoolwork? Like 99% Lampoon, and then 1% sleep, I guess, and then 0% regular schoolwork. I'm sure your parents are pleased to hear that. Yeah, I mean, they've already given up. So I have a younger sister who will be, like, doing all the right things while I do this.

Most aspire to a career in comedy, and the lampoon serves as their first writer's room. Just as iron sharpens iron, you might say that here, irony sharpens irony. The Lampoon has a rich history of deploying that irony in special edition parodies of other publications. Name a popular magazine and be assured it's been the victim of a Lampoon send-up. This parody of Cosmo, complete with Henry Kissinger's Centerfold, endures as a classic in the genre. Their latest is an absurdist parody of Harvard's daily student newspaper, The Crimson, but that's just the physical product. Pranks. Cooking them up and then carrying them out are as much a part of the Lampoon tradition as

actual humor writing. Lampoon staff invited us to see how it's done. We watched as they fanned out across campus, taking that parody issue and scheming to swap it out with the real Crimson. It's the kind of thing they live for. Perfect. For decades, the Crimson has been the butt of Lampoon hijinks. Leona Spiro's crowning achievement so far? When Mark Zuckerberg returned to Harvard to give a commencement address, she hacked into the Crimson's website.

And we wrote up hundreds of these fake headlines about Mark Zuckerberg in the silliest comedic tone possible, extremely dumb. Basically, the crux of the humor was just changing his name to, like, Mink Zinkletalk, like, over and over again. Our amusement went unshared by the Harvard Crimson. How upset were they? They were fairly upset. My roommate actually is on the Crimson and this was the only time that she really was

upset at me. She had worked weeks on a very long piece like 10,000 words about some corner of Harvard's administration and then I had worked, you know,000 words about some corner of Harvard's administration. And then I had worked, you know, two hours on some headlines about mink zinkeltonk. But I'm super pro-pranking them all the time. Every once in a while, the Lampoon will pull off a prank so bold, it achieves comic glory. And Tom Waddick, currently a senior, may have set the new standard. This one started late one night. Waddick recruited some a senior, may have set the new standard. This one started late one night. Waddick recruited some Lampoon conspirators to break into the Crimson headquarters

and steal the paper's famous president's chair. It was the summer of 2015, and Donald Trump had just announced he was going to run for president. Pretending to represent the Crimson, Waddick contacted the Trump campaign and offered up the student newspaper's endorsement. Would Mr. Trump like to pose for the accompanying photo in the Crimson's chair? They say this seems like something that Mr. Trump would be very interested in. Waddick and crew raced from Harvard to Manhattan and parked a few blocks from Trump Tower. They lugged the chair in a freight elevator and made it to the 25th floor.

By the way, the chair is about 150, 200 pounds, so it takes two or three people to carry it anywhere. With an eye on the chair, Trump welcomes students he believed to be Crimson editors. It was very nice. He had his hair fixed. While you were there? While we were there, they had sort of hairspray and combed it over and stuff. And he said, people don't think my hair is real, but you can all testify this is very real. Once the cosmetics were complete, it was time to capture the moment. So he said, everyone do the thumbs up. So we're all doing his sort of signature thumbs up around him. And I was just like, we got it.

Not quite. A few days later, as he was preparing to publish the endorsement, Waddock received a call from Trump's longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen. The Trump campaign realized they'd been had. He says, you know, I'm going to come up to Harvard. You're all going to get expelled. If this photo gets out, you'll be out of that school faster than you know it. I can be up there tomorrow. What's that like? I mean, it was terrifying. He asked me to send my Harvard ID so he could have my identity, my information. Did you send it? And I sent it right away. I was so afraid that if I didn't, he might actually be crazy enough to fly

up here. The Trump campaign never did follow up. The Crimson, good sports that they are, published the story of the prank later that summer, complete with photo. And with that, Tom Waddock and company gained a measure of lampoon immortality, which is saying something given the alumni roles. Early generations count everyone from William Randolph Hearst to George Plimpton to John Updike. What the hell is wrong with you people? The modern Era produced Conan O'Brien and Colin Jost, currently co-anchor of Weekend Update for Saturday Night Live.

But most Lampoon stars are not stars at all. David Mandel, class of 92, has written for shows from SNL to Seinfeld. He's currently the showrunner for HBO's Veep. Veep! Emmy winner for Outstanding Comedy Series, three years running. This is for chubby Jews from the Upper West Side. What made you want to join the Limphead? The building. You kind of, you can't help but notice it.

You know, you see a lot of other organizations, you go to a lot of other meetings, and there's this one place that happens to have a castle, and it definitely hits you. It's hard to overstate the importance of the castle. Built in 1909 in a style described as mock Flemish, whatever that means, the exterior almost winks at you, foreshadowing farce. And inside, the Great Hall, site of lampoon parties so legendary, movies have been made about them. F*** Lampoon. In real life, the Great Hall, along with most of the castle, is strictly off-limits to non-members.

Our cameras weren't permitted anywhere but the library, no matter how many times we asked. We did, however, track down the unofficial godfather of the place. Jim Downey, class of 74, cuts a mythical figure within Harvard Lampoon circles. The centerfold... The guy responsible for that Kissinger centerfold fondly recalls his late nights at the castle. We thought it was the funniest thing on earth to pointlessly put the word frankly into any answer to a question. So it could be like, what bus goes up 10th Avenue? Frankly, the M11. Or what planet has the most eccentric orbit? Frankly, Mercury. Downey made a career of mining humor from the mundane.

Frankly, he's also written some of the most enduring political satire of the last 40 years. To sum up in a single word, the best argument for his candidacy. He's also written some of the most enduring political satire of the last 40 years. To sum up in a single word, the best argument for his candidacy, Governor Bush, strategery. For decades, Downey sketches cold open Saturday Night Live. Yet ask Jim Downey about his most memorable moment in comedy, and he harkens back to January of 1974, when he and the Lampoon invited John Wayne to campus, and it became news.

The Lampoon challenged conservative Wayne to come to Harvard. Wayne not only accepted, he rode through town on a tank that Downey and accomplices had borrowed from a nearby military installation. You still recall the party that night? It's traditional for people to get up and dance on the table, and Wayne was right up there with, didn't have to be coaxed. Downey's most lasting contribution, he opened an employment pipeline, hiring and referring countless Lampoon alumni,

who now fill writers' rooms at shows from Curb Your Enthusiasm to Silicon Valley. Al Jean, class of 81, came through the Downey Pipeline and now runs The Simpsons, the longest-running comedy in television history. Half his writing staff is former Lampoon. So it is that more than a few subversive references to their alma mater make their way into Simpsons episodes. I'm in! I bet I'll get a little respect once I get that Harvard diploma.

I'll be honest, I read scripts to hire people and I'll read a script and I'll go, oh that's great, and then I'll look at the background of the person and I'll go, oh no, Lampoon, I didn't want to hire another. Why oh no? Well because I want the show to be much more diverse. You're not actively seeking out Lampoon alumni? Never, never actively. We found a motley crew when we visited the castle last year. But the Lampoon pipeline to TV writers' rooms has been called a mafia, one that favors Lampoon alumni to the exclusion of more diverse voices.

When alumni come back, they're almost all men. Sometimes they all feel like clones of each other. It's like white men of varying ages who are into comedy, And you just feel like none of these people look like me. What do we do about that? I think just like saying to the world that we have noticed that we're not diverse and that we aren't happy with that and want to change could do a lot. Back in Hollywood, David Mandel is watching and reading this current generation. He has two pieces of sage advice.

Make me laugh. That's all I care about. Make me laugh. Is it funny? And then just kind of hoping that the undergrads don't burn the place down. You're carrying the torch now. Your job is not to burn down this place. Yes. Can you handle that challenge? Well, the fire alarm has gone off four times in the last year, so that would indicate perhaps no.